The Importance of Having Live Chat on Your Jewelry Store's Website

When you invest in a website for your jewelry store, you understandably want prospects and customers to be able to reach you if they have a question. Most jewelry store websites of course will include telephone number, and address, and a form submission email.

When jewelry store's have their website truly functioning as an extension of their sales team, being able to reach a sales associate if they have a question without picking up the phone results in increased sales and heightened engagement with clients.

Live chat offers a number of benefits over other contact channels and is all about giving the client the immediate response they may be looking for when on your website.

In this blog, we’ll look at the many benefits of having live chat and what it can do to help you attract and retain more customers, as well as increase sales. 

Contact a Website Visitor at the Right Moment

Many people think live chat is a salesperson asking if there’s anything they can do to help, and browsers reflectively answering, “no, just looking, thanks”. However, live chat typically goes much deeper than that and especially when shopping for fine jewelry.

For example, imagine that someone is browsing on your website for an engravable necklace for a Christmas gift. They’ve found something they like and are spending a great deal of time on the product detail page, but are not sure of the chain length, timing to complete the engraving, and options of font. This could be the prime opportunity for them to chat in with a sales associate and get those questions answered right away while their attention is focused on this product page.

You can see how live chat lends itself well to simply answering questions as well as creating a dialogue with the client just as you would if they walked into the jewelry store. However, it shouldn’t be used primarily as a channel to do that.

Your sales associate on live chat will also want to do their best to gauge the customer’s interest level, their prospective purchase timeline and test the waters before jumping in with tons of recommendations. For the customer, it can be off-putting to suddenly face a barrage of sales, but having this personalized attention just by visiting your website will most certainly be a great tool for your sales team.

The Power of Chat History

One of the things you should know as a website owner and business owner is what your customers’ pain points are. Oftentimes, businesses simply guess at what these might be, but live chat can tell you concretely.  Through the use of an organized chat history, jewelry store website owners can filter and pinpoint issues that customers may have. For instance, If you constantly have website visitors chatting in asking about your return policy or customized jewelry options and you do not have that information easily found on your website, this is a signal that it's something you need to address more readily on your website.

Personalized Recommendations Translate To Your Website

Another great benefit of live chat is that it provides you the perfect opportunity to direct the potential customer toward more information if necessary. Being able to point a  customer on your website searching for engagement rings to a ring-sizing guide, or someone searching for gifts under $500 for their mother to your Holiday Gift Guide really creates that personal experience that every jewelry store should be offering at any touchpoint with a potential customer.

Little things like this can have a great impact on not just brand affinity, but also the overall customer experience, which in turn encourages more recommendations and better reviews on social media, as well as longer customer retention.

Stand Out from Your Competition

Despite live chat being massively popular and the ease of installation and options, it's still something that is not commonly seen on jewelry store websites. Most clients of GemFind do have a chat feature and credit their online growth to the never ending contact with clients that can function whether their physical doors are open or not.

If there is anything that 2020 has taught business owners, particularly with shopping restrictions still in place in many parts of the country going into the holiday season, having the ability for potential clients to reach out to sales associates at any time will leverage the communication path and result in more sales.

Jewelry Is Personal, So Your Website Should Reflect That

Putting the technology aside for a moment, the jewelry products on your website and that you create as a jeweler become milestone celebration gifts, coveted and loved heirlooms, and the beginning of couple's lives together. As a jewelry store owner, the interactions with your clients over the years include being a part of all of these shopping experiences in your store. Live chat will only benefit you and your sales associates in continuing to foster those relationships for years to come. Live chat personalizes your website by having instant access to the experts and best representation of your store.

Still Have Questions? 

Of course, adding live chat to your website does involve asking yourself some questions. Who will staff it? Will you rely heavily on “canned” answers for the most common questions or will you have one of your staff tend to it during regular business hours? Do you have additional resources and content that you can have ready to help guide and point users in the right direction should they have specific questions or concerns? 

These are all things you’ll want to ask yourself as you consider adding live chat functionality to your jewelry store website. But that doesn’t mean you have to tackle it alone. At GemFind Digital Solution, we have decades of experience in the jewelry industry, helping jewelry store owners to market their business online, reach new customers, retain customers, build loyalty and branding and much more.