WHO ON EARTH WOULD BE ON MY WEBSITE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?
By Tim Breden, Commercial Director, Yomdel
We now surf, browse, research, and shop online 24/7, so why don’t websites have online sales assistants 24/7?
When I recently spoke to a few friends about online chat a reasonably intelligent guy said: “Who on earth would be shopping online at 2 am!”. There followed a heated conversation about his poor wife who regularly did the Sainsbury’s Shop when the new baby woke at that time. She also admitted to ordering baby clothes, clothes for herself, new baby gadgets and “feel good” gifts when feeling down or just enjoying some retail therapy.
Another guy said his shift finished at 6 am and he was always looking for new gadgets for his bike at this very early hour when it wasn’t ready to sleep. He then went on to say that on occasions he’d tried to buy bicycle accessories but sometimes failed when he couldn’t get simple questions answered immediately and had wondered why there weren't any online sales assistants.
We normally book the family holidays after supper around 9-10 pm. We spend a good few evenings finding the right place and eventually book it. Just imagine if someone was online at the first site we’d visited and guided us to the holiday of our dreams instead of allowing us to visit dozens of websites before we eventually “Just book something!”
On the supplier side, shops, restaurants and other small businesses will source supplies when the pressure is off and they can devote time to surfing for solutions, products and services.
Shift workers, insomniacs, people less restricted to time related appointments can all be surfing at any time between midnight, early morning, through the day and long into the next evening. In fact, I guess, most are less likely to surf 9-5!
Imagine if we all shopped in the High Street at 6 am or midnight? Would JD Sports or M&S have self-service tills and leave you to it, with a sign saying “HELP AVAILABLE AT 9 am”?
Now is the time to service your customers, to answer questions and reduce abandonment, using live chat to provide on lie sales assistants to ensure your customers have a positive experience and your investment turns into extra sales and increased average order value.
If you want, you could even talk to us now to hear how Yomdel can help.
