5 ways to bring in-store best practices to your website

The launch of the Amazon Mayday button and Google Helpouts has shined a spotlight on the role of live video assistance in strengthening online retail performance. Understanding how live engagement tools emulate and even improve upon in-store selling best practices is essential.  Here are 5 ways live video assistance strengthens online retail performance by bringing these in-store best practices to your website:

Greet the customer – Greeting customers as they enter the store and guiding them to the right products is key to reducing customer frustration and abandonment. Live video engagement and co-browsing tools make this easy to do online, and by using a smart rules engine you can identify particular customers in particular journeys to invite into a live video session.

Learn about your customers – In-store, you can participate in shopping along with the customer. The face-to-face interaction through live video allows for new levels of rapport and trust to be established in the ecommerce experience. Existing CRM, tracking and behavioral tools can be a great complement to this process.

Verify they have the right product(s) – Does the customer know everything they should about fit, product care, strengths and weaknesses, and possible alternatives? Live video and co-browsing assistance offers the guided selling tools necessary to help online shoppers make a purchase decision while limiting returns.

Do they need anything else? – There is no better time than when the customer is ready to purchase to see if there are any additional, complementary products they may need. Live agent support allows merchants to do this in a friendly and truly personalized way. As a result, AOV averages 25-30 percent higher with assisted sessions.

Walk the customer to the register – Helping customers quickly and efficiently complete an order maximizes customer satisfaction and reduces abandonment. Live video assistance helps the merchant accompany customers as they fill out forms and complete the checkout and payment process.

These tips, along with effective implementation and reporting on live video sessions will help you not only in closing the sales conversion gap between online and in-store, but also in increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.