An online store where customers left without an answer

The problem

The store had visitors, but too few orders. The standard search needed the exact word: anyone who typed “something for the balcony, rain-resistant” got nothing useful. And the questions people ask before buying, such as “does it fit with…?”, “when will it arrive?” or “can I return it?”, went unanswered after hours. Anyone who couldn’t find something, or didn’t get an answer on the spot, bought from someone else.

The proposed solution

The client wanted to get visitors to buy and was thinking of more advertising. I proposed that we first stop losing the people who already reach the store, and make their way to a purchase easier. The solution was ShopBot, a shopping assistant for WooCommerce: the customer says what they’re looking for in their own words and gets real products from the catalogue, with a photo, price and link, plus answers to the questions they have before ordering.

What I delivered

• ShopBot installed on the store, with the catalogue synchronised. Products, prices and stock stay up to date automatically.
• A chat built into the store, with the name, colour and position matching the brand, working with the existing theme. It answers only with products that exist, and doesn’t make things up.
• A set of frequently asked questions written together with the client: delivery, returns and store policies. The assistant answers from it, at any hour.
• Answers in the customer’s language, detected automatically, which helps buyers from other countries.
• If the assistant is unavailable, the standard search takes over automatically, so nobody is left without results.
• Statistics for the client: what people ask, which products they click on and what they add to the cart.
• A lightweight widget that doesn’t slow the store down, and read-only access to products, without collecting customer data.

The benefit afterwards

Customers quickly find the right product, even if they don’t know what it’s called, and get an immediate answer, at any time. More of them complete their order, and sales went up. The team is spared the repetitive questions and deals only with the ones that really need a person. From the statistics, the store learned what customers actually want and arranged its range accordingly.