What is a chatbot and why is it important for online business?

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A chatbot is a program that simulates a real conversation with a user on your website. But artificial intelligence needs to be trained, so you will have to put in some effort to make it work. In our article, we will give you some simple tips that will turn your chatbot into an effective tool for communicating with your audience.

According to a study by the American company advantages of using our skype database Databox, 88% of marketers consider it necessary to install a chatbot application on their website. Moreover, 41% of respondents find them very useful.


Only 12% did not appreciate the chatbot capabilities for business, answering that they are annoying. In our opinion, this should serve as motivation for creating more attractive and effective chatbots to create a positive user experience when interacting with your website.

However, despite the keen interest in the technology, not everyone can boast of knowledge and understanding of the basic principles of its operation. Do you know what response rate of website visitors can be considered acceptable? Here are the data obtained in the same study:


As we can see, 59% of marketers indicated that their click-through rate exceeds the 10% mark. This is impressive, considering that the acceptable conversion rate for the query “fill out a lead form” is 2-5%. Is it possible to achieve the same results using chatbot scripts? Here are 5 tips on how to create a chatbot and significantly increase your conversion.

Write in human language
So, you've created a sales page and installed a chatbot. Your website visitors know how to interact with it. But that doesn't mean it should treat your customers like a robot.

The goal of your chatbot is to convey useful information to the user, to help them solve their problem. To do this, ask your programmer to write a script that is as close as possible to a simple human conversation. Be witty and even a little emotional: people like to talk to someone real.

Tip: Set up the bot to respond at different intervals in the range of 2-7 seconds. After all, real people cannot respond at the same speed.

Add emojis and slang to your conversations, but don’t overdo it: it may seem like the chatbot is trying too hard to sound like a flesh-and-blood interlocutor. And don’t forget the main goal of a business chatbot — to help people, not mislead them.

Personal communication with a colleague or friend will help you write texts for the bot. Ask them how they would behave when searching for a similar service or product, what information would help them in their search. You can apply this knowledge in an online conversation.

Study your audience
This will help you better understand how to conduct a conversation. For example, people are more receptive to humor when ordering pizza than when dealing with banking issues. Knowing this, determine the type of dialogue for your chatbot that matches the user’s mood and personality.

Make sure you create a chatbot that can not only conduct a dialogue but also express emotions through emojis and stickers. If it does not do this, then in most cases the user will be bored and will not be satisfied with the answers.

Be interesting but constructive
Your users will remember the chatbot if it answers their questions in an original and witty way. This will help keep people on the site: they will test your app to find out how smart the chatbot is and what else it can surprise them with.

But don't rely too much on a chatbot, because it's hard to reproduce human speech. This means you should be prepared for a situation where the bot doesn't understand what you want from it. You can avoid this by adding witty answers to unusual user questions to the bot script. They will appreciate that you care and that you've spent time developing the service's personality traits.

Tip: To avoid such situations, you should ask yourself three questions:

What am I asking the user to do?
Why might they misunderstand me?
How can I clarify unclear questions?
Make communication easier
Another sign of a good user experience is making sure your content doesn’t overwhelm the user. Clear and concise wording will increase the usefulness of the chatbot and its responses. Write as naturally as you would talk to a friend who isn’t familiar with your work. Then the user may even forget that they are talking to a chatbot. Reviews in this case will be mostly positive.

How to simplify communication:

avoid formality and bureaucracy;
avoid excessive familiarity;
Speak to the point.
According to Rob Harrigan, head of Watson and AI prototyping at IBM, you can increase the relevance of answers by 15% simply by translating them into more understandable language for the user.

Simplify the interaction process
Some marketers noted that when preparing the text, it is also important to consider the simplicity of the communication process itself. For example, you can offer users not to type a response manually, but to choose a ready-made option. Or offer voice input to make the task easier. Do not forget that people are lazy by nature.

You can also use text that works well on other user engagement channels and adapt it to your chatbot.

You can also identify topic areas that interest users and identify and integrate their motivations into the chatbot. This will help simplify the user experience.

TOP 5 Russian services for creating chatbots
Bot Kits Supported platforms: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Telegram, website, Skype, Viber. Cost: from 499 rubles per month.
Botmother Supported platforms: Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Viber, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki. The first bot is free.
Chatgun Supported platforms: VKontakte. Cost: from 390 rubles per month.
Dialogflow Supported platforms: Google Assistant, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Skype, Viber and other platforms. Free standard plan.
Manybot Supported platforms: Telegram. Cost: free.