How Using a Website Chatbot Helps You Engage All Website Visitors

Technology is a powerful tool for engaging and interacting with customers. And it makes life easier and helps small organizations and nonprofits stay within a tight marketing budget.

Too often, teen programs don’t have a plan for how to convert website visitors or engage with them. But a chatbot can change that by asking website visitors one simple question when they land on your website: “what goals would you like to achieve here?”

Or you can tailor that question to better match your organization and its services to ask more about what they are interested in or how you can direct them. 

Consumers want an easy way to interact with you, just like they do with their bank, rideshare app or technology.

Here’s a look at why adding a chatbot to your website is essential.

What Is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a programmed tool that interacts with website visitors. It imitates human behavior to deliver responses based on what the website visitor inputs. 

While it isn’t a live interaction between your organization and the bot, it can point the visitor in the right direction, even if that is filling out a form or contacting someone via an email address.

You’ve likely interacted with a chat tool on a website at some point, whether that be to contact customer service about an order or to find out how to use software to its fullest.

In some cases, chatbots operate off of FAQs you’ve already drafted to pull keywords and help direct customers. But they make it so your customers don’t have to skim the full FAQ page to get where they need to go. Instead, the chatbot points them directly.

The main purpose of a website chatbot is to guide customers from point A to point B. Perhaps they’ve landed on your website from a third-party website or a search engine inquiry. Regardless of where they came from, the bot can help them find the information they came for to build a valuable relationship with you.

As you get more into chatbots and understand how and when to use them, here's a look at the two types to choose from.

Simple Chatbots Explained

A simple chatbot responds to keywords and commands that you train it to. They offer simple communication. But the setback to these simple bots is that they can turn up no results for a user if you haven’t programmed results for those keywords because it cannot understand context or complicated language.

Advanced Chatbots Explained

In contrast to simple chatbots, advanced options use artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver more results based on what the visitor asked. It can understand the basics of human language and communicate with the customer accordingly.

While advanced bots are not human interactions, they are one step away from that. In some cases, your customer might not realize there isn’t a human behind the answers they are seeing.

6 Website Chatbot Benefits

With a broader understanding of what a chatbot is and how it works, you're ready to see how this technology could lead your organization to greater success. Regardless of how large or small your operation is, you'll see these outstanding benefits from adding a chatbot to your technology lineup.

1. Simplify the Customer Buying Journey

Pause and think back to a recent time when you were exploring options or answers related to a topic. You likely visited several websites, and it took some time to feel like you’d really found the answer. Or you might have gotten stuck aimlessly navigating the same website as you browsed pages questioning why Google landed you there.

Consumers want access to information quickly. They aren't looking to spend tons of time browsing. A chatbot helps simplify the customer buying journey by learning quickly what the customer is looking for and delivering it to them right away. It's like an impressive magic trick with the click of a button.

And you just might learn more about the customer and get the chance to ask them for their contact information, which opens the door to building a relationship with them as you guide them through the buying journey in a personal way. 

Chatbots help bring the information to the customer instead of relying on the customer to seek it out. They can also add value to one of your largest assets: your website and its content.

2. It Starts Building a Relationship with Customers

Yes, we know, chatbots are not real people. But often interactions with chatbots feel like interactions with real people. Because they are delivering answers in a natural, organized manner, they can feel like the customer is interacting directly with someone from your organization.

This can make a great segue into interacting with someone from your organization via other contact methods. And it can feel truly seamless to the customer while ensuring you aren’t missing out on converting a website visitor.

3. Chatbots Are Active 24/7

Unlike chatting with a person during business hours, chatbots are available around the clock every day of the week – including holidays and weekends. When a customer is seeking urgent information, such as how to enroll their teen in a program that starts tomorrow, they can find help from your friendly technology assistant.

Just be sure that you’re programming your bot to transition to a live human being when things escalate or they can’t find an answer to a question based on their programming.

4. They Alert a Website Visitor Quickly

You have just 15 seconds to engage a website visitor before you risk them bouncing. As such, you need a way to alert them to your resources. Chatbots are great for that.

A small alert in the corner of the screen lets the customer know that the chatbot is there. And that friendly question of “what goals would you like to achieve here?” can help get your visitor on the right track to avoid bouncing.

You might program your bot to connect with customers 5-10 seconds after they land on the page. That way it isn’t something that’s in the way initially, but it does its job of avoiding the bounce.

5. Bots Can Schedule Further Contact

Some teen programs have a personalized approach to their interactions with customers. As such, FAQs and help centers just don’t do it for converting website leads. That’s understandable. You can still program your chatbot to schedule the next contact with your organization.

Ultimately, your goal is not to only facilitate interactions with a chatbot. You want to get to know your customers and transition to live interactions with a team member or supplying information via marketing automation based on what the customer showed interest in.

Chatbots are great at asking a few questions to direct contacts to the right person or department. But the benefits of chatbot interactions and scheduling is not just for your organization. The customer also benefits from the fact that they can select preferred contact methods and ideal times to interact with your organization.

6. You’ll Convert More Website Traffic

If you see an incredible website traffic volume but face a minimal conversion rate, you can improve that with a chatbot. There are various reasons for this.

• They help consumers find what they are looking for
• They prompt the user to take the next step
• They start building a relationship with the consumer to increase the likelihood of conversion
• They reduce bounce rates by getting in front of the customer quickly
• They interact with the customer in your brand voice
• They request contact information to send lead magnets or other information promptly

You no longer need to wait around for a website visitor to find a form and complete it. Instead, you can request the information and ensure the customer takes the next step with incredible speed and agility while making it feel more personal.

Driving and Converting More Website Traffic

Ultimately, you can’t convert website traffic you don’t have. But by putting a chatbot in place, you ensure you’re ready to convert traffic once you start a new marketing campaign or partnership. TeenLife offers many opportunities that help you reach your target audience when they are seeking information related to teen programs, volunteering, gap years, college prep, etc. in your area. Contact us now to learn more.