Online ecommerce accounted for 21.3% of all U.S. retail sales in 2020, up from 15.8% in 2019 and 14.3% in 2018. Unfortunately, it isn’t always an easy process, especially if the customer is on a smartphone. Mobile commerce accounted for only about 6% in 2020. In 2019, people who shopped online from their phones had an 86% cart abandonment rate. 

Conversational checkout via SMS text messaging can help ecommerce retain customers by reordering products or ordering new products through text. 

If your customers have already opted-in to receive SMS messages from your business, enabling checkout via text messaging can more than double the conversion rate in our experience. 

If you’re ready to explore conversational checkout, here are five best practices. 

What Is Conversational Checkout?

Conversational commerce is the process of buying goods and services over messaging channels like SMS, Messenger, Instagram Messaging, and WhatsApp.

While Conversational commerce refers to the use of messaging channels to engage the user throughout the e-commerce journey - starting from an ad all the way to post-purchase support, Conversational Checkout specifically refers to the use of messaging channels to facilitate the purchase action.

For example, a customer might  receive a reminder text to order a refill, with instructions to reply “Yes” to the message to reorder. If the customer responds with “Yes”, the order would be processed without the need to go to the website.

Learn more about Conversational Checkout here: How Conversational Checkout Can Boost Ecommerce Sales

5 Best Practices for Conversational Checkout via Text Messaging

Here are some tips to ensure you deliver the best conversational checkout experience possible for your customers. 

Best Practice 1: Be Clear

Many people g may not understand how to  checkout on their phone by sending a text. Your customers  will need clear instructions to understand how to trigger the conversational checkout flow. 

For example, provide what keyword or action word they need to use to proceed through the conversational checkout (for example, “type YES to add to cart”). 

In addition to the exact keyword, you should also accept other variants of the action word, such as “okay,” “yeah,” “ya,” “si,” “oui,” etc.  If they start to type the keyword and enter Y, you can also trigger a message to confirm they want to order. 

You can also set keywords that correspond to specific products that would trigger a conversational checkout. 

For example, a company with skincare products could have keywords for “toner” “cleanser” “eye serum” that a customer could enter by text to buy without having to go to the website, especially if it is a product they had purchased before. 

Best Practice 2: Provide a Way Back

Autocorrect can result in some hilarious or awkward texts, but for a customer trying to order something in a new way, it can cause panic or concern. 

You need to always provide customers with a way back to the conversational checkout flow, so they can continue shopping, confirm the order or confirm they are not interested. One way to do this is to repeat the action word in your response (e.g. “checkout”). 

By providing a way back, you prevent the customer giving up and abandoning the cart.

If a customer responds by saying no, you want to acknowledge their response, while leaving the door open to change their mind. 

You could use something such as, “No problem, and if you change your mind and want to reorder, just type Checkout in response to this message” and include a keyword that will trigger the conversational checkout.

Best Practice 3: Show an Order Summary

All your correspondence with your customers needs to reflect your brand, be professional, friendly and complete. This is especially important when you are sending an order confirmation via text. 

Make sure the copy on the order summary message seems “official” and gives the customer confidence that they are not being scammed and can feel safe about placing an order. It needs to look identical to something they would receive if they placed an order via your website.

One of the best ways to prevent an abandoned cart is to show all the costs upfront. No one likes to get to the checkout, only to discover shipping will cost more than the product. In fact, Optimizely reports that high shipping costs is one of the most common reasons consumers abandon an online order. 

Make sure the order summary contains the total amount, including taxes and shipping charges and the shipping address. If the customer wants to make changes to the order, give them clear instructions on how they can make changes to their cart.

Best Practice 4: Send a Reminder

Customers may show initial interest in ordering conversationally and then they may abandon the conversational checkout flow. This can happen for a number of reasons, including concerns about security, issues with how information displays on a mobile device or lack of confidence in the technology. 

Send a gentle reminder with clear action words that they can use to complete placing the order. Barilliance found that a reminder sent within 1 hour of cart abandonment resulted in a 20.3% conversion rate. Waiting 24 hours before sending a reminder resulted in only a 12.2% conversion rate. 

Best Practice 5: Give a Link

ShopPop.com found the most common reasons for cart abandonment in addition to unexpected high shipping costs were issues with technology, trust issues, lack of payment options and checkout complexity. 

If your customer starts a conversational checkout, and then gives up, one way to provide additional support and build trust is to provide a link they can use that will take them to your traditional checkout, with cart intact. 

Remember: the checkout process should be identical, whether through text or website. Provide clear instructions, complete information and remember to reflect your brand. 

Final Thoughts

Ecommerce exploded over the last couple of years, and many customers have learned to embrace online shopping. In 2020, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to $4.28 trillion U.S. dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to $5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022.

As people become more comfortable with ecommerce, reaching out to them with targeted marketing will become more straightforward. If your customers have opted-in to receive SMS messages from you, conversational checkout can be a valuable marketing tool. 

Things to remember: 

• Not every platform has the ability to integrate SMS conversational checkout into their suite of products. Make sure your platform can accommodate it. Incorporate your ecommerce activities into your SMS marketing platform.
• Every communication should reflect your brand, and conversational checkout is no exception. Make sure you provide clear, concise and comprehensive instructions to your customers about how to move through the checkout process. Include all costs upfront, and ensure that it looks professional. 
• Before you send any information by SMS/MMS to your customers, ensure they have opted-in to receive that communication. Then, you can target conversational checkout campaigns to customers who have saved payments enabled in their account.
• Give customers a way to get back into the checkout process if required, and be open to providing multiple ways for your customers to complete their transactions. Technology can be very overwhelming for some people, and millions have had to learn on the fly.
• Remember, SMS marketing has strict rules to follow. You must have written opt-in from your customers before you can send them messages. Failure to follow the rules gets very expensive quickly. For more information, check out our article “5 SMS and MMS Campaign Best Practices”
  
  

Here at Radiance Commerce, we have the platform and the knowledge to build a customized conversational experience for you. Contact us today to learn more.