Chatbot strategy in 2024 - AI website chat best practices

Website chatbots in 2024 are cheap, powerful, and extremely easy to install even with minimal tech knowledge.

There are tons of solutions on the market - and we have created Chatbit to be the best option for a quick, functional, and robust AI website chatbot.

However, due to website chatbots being so accessible, most businesses underuse them. In fact, around 80% of businesses are not satisfied with their chatbot performance. 

We’ve seen it time and time again - small businesses add chatbots on websites but don’t train them properly, use a tone that does not fit their market, or lack creativity in achieving their specific goals.

There are many website chatbot strategies for businesses of all sizes and revenue levels, and each industry & niche requires a custom, practice-based approach.

Here’s how to tell if your website chatbot strategy is not good enough:

Low engagement rates

If less than 30% of your website visitors engage with your chatbot, something is off. Very rarely it’s the audience that is completely alien to chatbots, and most often it’s a matter of chatbot training and set-up.

You see no results

If you have no idea what’s changing in your customer support, sales, or lead generation with the addition of an AI chatbot to your website, you could definitely be doing better.

Your employees are not relieved

A proper chatbot implementation should help your employees, not scare, confuse, or threaten them.

An AI chatbot is a universal assistant that does not have days off or mood swings and can be scaled for consistent high-volume interaction, and you should treat it as one.

Sales don’t go up

Businesses exist to make money, and the ultimate end goal of everything you do should be to increase your revenue. 

If you’ve had an AI chat on your website for months without any change in sales and revenue - you need to rethink your chatbot strategy.

Your lead generation results are the same

Again, chatbots offer great power in lead generation, qualification, and nurturing, and if you don’t notice any improvements with your lead gen, it’s time to upgrade your chatbot strategy.

Chatbot strategy best practices

Don’t worry if your chatbot experience fits the above descriptions - most small businesses are getting less value from website chatbots than they can.

Here’s a set of best practices to boost your chatbot strategy:

Have a plan & track the numbers

Know why you have a chatbot on your site in the first place. Have an actual plan with clear goals and objectives.

Set goals and KPIs for your chatbot implementation - this will be useful no matter how small you are and how unrealistic your goals may turn out to be.

First-hand data will help you understand your target market and your business challenges better than a thousand blog posts.

Keep the design simple and tasteful

The UI of your website chatbot should be easy to use and eye catching, but not intrusive or obnoxious. People are used to chatbots by now - but they will never be used to tone-deaf ones.

See our guide on chatbot design for inspiration and ideas. In a nutshell, always consider your target audience's public profile, demographics, and brand voice while designing the user interface of your chatbot.

Customize and test, test, test

Chatbot must have the ability to gather data from past customer interactions and utilize it to customize responses based on each user's unique requirements. 

Customize your chatbot's experience by making messages that are specific to each web page.

Based on the Chatbit subscription level you’ve picked, you can create up to 10 chatbots each trained on different data and using a different tone. This means testing up to 10 different approaches at once. 

When you split-test your Chatbit instances you can focus on the best-performing ones and make sure you’re getting the most out of your chatbot training, tone, and prompts.

Having an optimally tailored chatbot for every product or service type, every market and audience, and every sales tactic is an amazing advantage. None of your competition using AI chatbots fresh out of the box will ever be able to catch up.

Work the tone

A well-matched tone (or “AI temperature”) of your chatbot helps develop a genuine connection with customers.

The most common mistake businesses make is opting for a tone that’s too playful. Usually a neutral and focused tone is enough for all industries and niches.

Keep humans close

No matter how well you set up your AI website chatbot, you need human supervision to get even more value out of it.

Have someone business-minded go through all the interactions your chatbot has with website visitors, and identify patterns and challenges. Very often a simple proactive human follow-up routine as a part of your chatbot strategy will boost your conversion rate through the roof.

After all, over 70% of consumers prefer human interaction over chatbots for customer service inquiries, and even a simple reassurance that you DO have human reps and they are always near can do wonders.

Showcase value

Always let your chatbot users know right away how the interaction will benefit them. No matter which tone you pick, make sure the chatbot clearly states WHY the user would want to engage with it. 

Some audiences are getting tired of chats and AI assistants, so a chatbot on your website needs to be upfront about the value it will bring to the visitor.

These can be messages like:

“I will help you to pick a product model”

“I will ask several simple questions to help you save on a plan”

“I will connect you with the right support person so you don’t have to wait on the line”

If your chatbot states its’ intentions like that right after the greeting, users will feel way more relaxed using it and answering its’ questions.

Don’t be intrusive

Most of the time conversational AI is very delicate and safety-focused, but the amount of data you’re trying to get in a single conversation may be too much.

Try to avoid scenarios where your chatbot is greeting every visitor with a wall of text and a sequence of generic questions. Instruct the AI to be subtle.

Use existing content

Back up your AI website chatbot responses with the content and resources you already have. Train your Chatbit to suggest blog posts, knowledgebase articles, YouTube videos, social media posts, or any other type of content your brand has created.

This helps legitimize your chatbot responses, give them more authority, and ultimately, make your website chatbot sound more human. Your overall brand image also becomes more complete with every conversation that uses other sources, and that leads to trust.

Chatbit allows you to put together a chatbot strategy using all of the above techniques, and much more. Sign up today and see how easy it is to implement, tweak, and optimize!