The State of Live Chat for E-commerce

Project Description

A Fortune 500 luxury brand sought my expertise to improve their live chat experience across all devices. Working with another UX researcher, we conducted in-depth market research and used our findings to improve the designs of our client’s live chat communication services.

Given the advent of AI and chatbots in the past year or so, at the time of research (early 2016), the capabilities of live chat were certainly not as robust as they are today.

Even so, countless studies in the past 5+ years have suggested that having a live chat feature on your site drastically increases conversion rates. This is especially the case for e-commerce sites, where the end goal is to get users through the purchasing process as quickly as possible.

Live chat has become and continues to be a crucial part of customer support for any brand with an online presence. This seemingly simple feature can transform a sometimes frustrating, impersonal customer service experience into one that is quick, personal and helpful to consumers.

Our competitive analysis covered a broad range of verticals to discover the proper features and implementations that could be used specifically for live chat for the beauty industry.