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The buyer’s journey is full of questions: When will this arrive? Is this ethically made? Will I be able to return it if I don’t love it? 

Pre-sales support grows your business by proactively answering these questions to help customers make more confident buying decisions. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, businesses with solid pre-sales strategies convert 40-50% of new customers.  

Whether you’re aware or not, most shoppers need a lot of information before they trust you with their credit card number: information about sizing, shipping costs, production materials, and so on. And if they can’t find an answer, they might venture to Amazon or another store that provides this information upfront. 

Below, learn how to structure a more effective pre-sales strategy that bolsters customer satisfaction and supports a healthy sales cycle. 

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What is pre-sales support?

Pre-sales support is the process of providing shoppers with the answers they need to feel confident in making a purchase. 

Especially as the shopping experience moves online, customers have new questions (e.g. “Is expedited shipping available?”) and more suspicion (e.g. “Does this product really show the accurate color of the product?”). The ability to answer pre-sales questions is an important factor in your online store’s conversion rate. 

Example of pre-sales questions that impact customer sales

A lack of pre-sales questions is a major pain point for shoppers, resulting in lost sales. While your store’s complete list of pre-sales questions will depend on your unique product and industry, use the list below as a starting point that covers most ecommerce fundamentals. Below are some common questions that your support team should be prepared to answer. 

Product details

• What size should I get?
• How does this product work?
• Who is this product for?

When trying to identify the best product for their needs, customers typically ask questions about size, color, durability, warranty, user-friendliness, safety, and so on. Another common question is how the product compares to its competitors.

For example, tech accessory brand Native Union’s product pages include quite a lot of information to proactively answer pre-sales questions about this product. On top of a detailed description, the page includes tech specs, compatibility, a section on “Why we designed this,” and products that work well with this one:

Your agents must answer these questions and point out how each product feature will add value to the customer’s life. If necessary, the agent can recommend other available products that might be a better fit for the customer’s budget or other requirements.

Inventory details

• When will you get this item back in stock?
• Does this include refills? 
• Does this come in any other colors? 

On top of questions about specific products, customers may have pre-sales questions about inventory levels and product availability. Think of this as the equivalent of asking the clerk whether they have any additional sizes in the back.

For example, ABLE responds to inventory-related questions on its Instagram posts: 

Shipping questions 

• How long do items process before they ship?
• Do you ship to my location?
• How much does shipping cost? 
• How long will shipping take?

Shipping-related concerns are common among pre-sales shoppers. Including a robust shipping FAQ page and self-service order tracking once orders ship can go a long way toward quelling those concerns. 

For example, Vancouver-based dress shop Park & Fifth has a detailed FAQ page that lists out answers to many shipping questions. To help brides understand how long they need to order a wedding dress from their white collection, they even specify how long those dresses take to ship. 

Technical support

• Will this item fit in my space? 
• How will I know how to install it once it arrives?
• Will this be compatible with my other devices?

Technical questions often require detailed measurement guides or a human touch so that shoppers can ensure they make the right choice. 

For example, car accessory brand GOBI shares installation guides and product specs within every product page. Since the brand creates roof racks for many different car models, customers need to ensure they’re purchasing the right one. 

Sourcing, ethical concerns, and brand values

• Do you use fairtrade and sustainably sourced materials?
• Are your operations eco-friendly?
• Are your sheets OEKO-TEX certified? 

More and more customers prefer getting their goods and services from socially responsible companies. Pointing out that your company adheres to ethical practices can convince shoppers with those concerns to make a purchase.

For example, fashion brand ALOHAS makes its sustainability practices well known across its website.  

Pricing frustration or confusion

• Can I get a discount?
• Do you have any upcoming sales? 

Most customers are looking for a bargain, so it’s not unusual to hear questions like the above. If a customer complains about prices or missing sales, you can offer a coupon to help get the customer to make a purchase. If giving a coupon is not feasible, inform the customer about upcoming sales.

If your brand doesn’t do sales, let shoppers know why your products are worth the price by explaining your unique selling points (USPs). You can also sway undecided prospects by offering free returns if the product falls short of their expectations.

For example, jewelry brand Jaxxon’s chat widget includes a button labeled, “Do you have any current promotions?” This way, customers can quickly find any promotions without having to leave your website or wait for an agent’s response (both of which would delay, or even derail, the purchase): 

Doubts about product efficacy

• Will this help my hair grow back?
• Are these vitamins really effective? 

When a potential customer doubts a product’s efficacy, telling them the product works is not enough to clear their doubts. 

On your website, make sure to list the product’s ingredients or qualities and explain why each one can deliver the results the prospect seeks. Case studies, positive reviews, and science-backed research that showcases the product’s effectiveness also go a long way in the battle for customer trust.

For example, vitamin brand Ritual shares information about the research team who formulated its vitamins and where it sources its ingredients on its website. 

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7 ways boost revenue with pre-sales support

Pre-sales support helps to stop shoppers from leaving your page to research products on other sites, and provides crucial objection handling that can make or break sales. In fact, Harvard Business Review found that optimized pre-sales processes converted 80 to 90% of repeat customers. 

Your support team must also act as sales reps in order to answer any questions, handle objections, or provide the assistance shoppers need to make a purchase. 

1) Make your website informative and easy-to-navigate

Shoppers won’t make purchases if they get confused on your website, or if it doesn't provide the information prospects need to confidently place an order. Your website’s browsing experience is your first line of defense against pre-sales questions that could block a sale.

There’s no limit to the ways you could optimize your website, but here are some of the best opportunities:

• Provide delivery estimates early in the checkout process
• Use banners to notify customers about temporary announcements (like delivery delays or new promotions)
• Make your shipping and return policy easily clickable from any page
• Create detailed product descriptions that provide information about the products production, compatibility, use cases, sizing, and more
• Create detailed sizing guides or a sizing questionnaire
• Use product quizzes to help customers find the right product for their needs 
• Provide multiple product photos (or even videos and 360-degree images) on each product page

You can also do market research to figure out what kinds of websites are easiest to navigate or for tips and tricks you can adopt to improve your website’s functionality. 

You can also look at your website traffic and perform data analysis to figure out what’s working and where you could use some optimization. For example, if you have incredible shipping and return policies that barely get any traffic, you may want to make links to those pages more prominent.

📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to ecommerce conversion optimization with A/B testing. 

2) Provide proactive self-service resources

On top of information dispersed across your site, you can also centralize answers to pre-sales questions in a self-service resource (like an FAQ page or Help Center knowledge base). 

If customers with questions are directed straight to your email, that’s a problem. You want to create a path to these answers (and the purchases that follow) that doesn't require leaving your website or shopping app — especially before an order is placed when leaving your site means abandoning a cart. 

A detailed, organized resource will quickly become your shoppers’ first stop for all questions and issues before reaching out to support. 

Once you build an FAQ page or Help Center, link it prominently on your website (like Jaxxon, who put a link in their website’s top navigation).

Once customers land on this resource, make navigation as easy as possible so customers can quickly answer their questions. A search bar is your best friend here. Your next best? Clear categorization, titles, and headers so customers can find exactly what they’re looking for. 

For example, furniture brand Branch offers an FAQ page and Help Center organized to answer common pre-sales questions from shoppers:

📚Recommended reading: Why Proactive Customer Service Is Your New Growth Strategy

3) Provide self-service answers to the most common questions in your chat widget

If your customers can’t find help on your website or help center, they’ll likely open up your live chat widget to ask a question. Fortunately, you have one more line of defense: Pre-loaded FAQs in your live chat. 

To save both your support team and your shoppers time, you can use a feature like Gorgias’ Quick Response Flows. These add interactive buttons to your chat widget that customers can click for an instant answer.

Take a look at ALOHAS’ Quick Response Flows to get the idea:

Quick Response Flows are a great match for pre-sales questions because your customers don’t have to leave your website (or wait for an agent’s follow-up response) to get the information they’re looking for.

Plus, Quick Response Flows don’t mimic or replace human agents — if customers aren’t satisfied with an answer, they don’t have to fight with a frustrating chatbot or open up an email to contact your team. They can easily click “I need more help” to be connected with a customer support agent or salesperson. 

How did Jaxxon Increased Revenue by 46% with Quick Response Flows? With Gorgias, Jaxxon is able to automate responses to common pre-sales questions and give customers instant answers around the clock, leading to happier customers, 46% more revenue, and time saved for the team to handle higher-impact conversations.

Read the case study.

4) Automatically answer common pre-sales questions your support team gets asked

If customers end up asking a question to your support team, you still have an opportunity to provide an answer with the help of automation. We recommend using a helpdesk that leverages omnichannel communication to receive and send messages via email, live chat, SMS, or any other channel.

With help from Gorgias, you can automatically detect common customer questions and fire an instant response based on a pre-written Macro template.

Gorgias’ Intent Detection capabilities can understand when customers are looking for specific information, so you can provide a helpful response without waiting for an agent. 

Setting up automated responses provides instant, helpful responses while improving project management for agents (they won’t have to answer as many questions) and create better workflows for them.

Save your time for better things

Unlock your customer support with Automate in Gorgias. Leverage tools designed to resolve common customer inquiries so you can focus on conversations that no robot can answer.

5) Use chat campaigns to reach out to live shoppers in real time 

Chat campaigns are automated outreach to customers via your site’s chat widget — kind of like an in-store sales team member approaching a shopper to see if they need help and know about the latest products and promotions.

Chat campaigns can offer updates, news like product launches or recent collabs, or ask shoppers if they have any questions they need answered. 

For example, if you use Gorgias, you can set up a prompt for users who have been on the site for a while: 

While the above example is a welcome message for all website visitors, you can get much more specific. For example, you can create chat campaigns for:

• Premium product pages to offer high-touch support
• Shipping pages to remind customers about your free shipping eligibility
• Checkout pages to offer a discount to get shoppers over the finish line

📚 Recommended reading: Learn more about chat campaigns, including examples to move shoppers down the sales funnel. 

6) Create custom pre-sales views within your helpdesk

To help support agents filter out pre-sales conversations, set up rules to help tag and prioritize pre-sales tickets within your helpdesk. 

In Gorgias, you can set up views and create tags and rules within those views so that agents can filter for only pre-sales questions. If you do this, be sure to clearly define to agents what qualifies as a pre-sales question. It’s anything that a shopper needs answered in order to justify a purchase. 

7) Monitor social media for pre-sales questions (and answer them publicly)

Help potential customers learn more about your products without ever leaving the social app they’re using. 

Because social media comments and direct messages come in across apps and usually in large quantities, this task should never fall on your marketing team. Instead, set support agents up with the information they need to answer customer questions on social media. These questions can often remove the barrier a shopper needs to make a purchase. 

For example, fine jewelry brand Fewer Finer often answers questions via Instagram Stories to help sell different pieces in its vintage and signature collections. 

How to measure pre-sales support

Most brands don’t think customer support teams offer much in the way of lead generation or sales. This couldn’t be farther from the truth: Pre-sales customer support teams can be a huge facilitator of sales — it’s just a matter of proving so. 

Here are three ways to measure revenue that comes in through support.  

1) Use a revenue generated by support dashboard 

Create or monitor a dashboard that shows all revenue that your support team generates. If you use Gorgias, you can see this in the Revenue Statistics part of your account. Gorgias attributes revenue to a conversation with an agent within the last 5 days before a sale. 

2. Track traffic coming into your help center

The traffic you get to your help center can also be another great indicator of pre-sales questions answered, an indicator of revenue generated by support. 

If a shopper visits your help center before making a purchase — especially an article containing pre-sales questions — it’s most likely because they’re interested in your brand, have questions, and are actively interested in learning more. 

Keep an eye on traffic here to prove your impact as well as understand how you could better organize and link your knowledge base to improve discoverability. 

3. Track the automation rate of pre-sales Quick Response Flows

If you automate responses in chat for common questions (called Quick Response Flows if you use Gorgias), you can measure their traffic.

For example, if you see that 200% more people click the response for “Do you have new products,” that’s a good sign your pre-sales support is funneling traffic to product pages. If you see a spike in purchases following that, count that as a win. If you use Gorgias, you can find these stats in the Revenue Statistics Dashboard. 

Post-sales support 

Post-sales support is an effective tool for supporting existing customers, encouraging exchanges over returns, and creating repeat business. 

The difference between pre-sales and post-sales support

Pre-sales support means answering the questions customers ask before making a purchase plus leading customers through the sales process and closing deals. Support agents turn into sales representatives to guide a customer from being a prospect to becoming a satisfied shopper. 

Customer support team members handle post-sales support as well — and this activity impacts your brand’s bottom line as well. By creating a good impression and meeting customer needs through quality post-sales, customers are more likely to become return shoppers, boosting customer retention and lifetime value. 

Proactive post-sales strategies 

After a customer places an order, keep them at ease but eager to keep shopping by sending:

• Detailed order confirmations: Share order confirmation emails that include a link to a customer’s order portal where they can find status updates like shipping times or return information. This helps to reduce WISMO (where is my order) requests. 
• A thank you note: Appreciating a customer goes a long way in showing that you value their patronage.
• Review request: Asking for feedback shows clients that their opinions matter to your company, and can help you make necessary improvements to the post-sales process. 
• Product suggestions: Product suggestions are a great way to keep customers engaged while awaiting their orders. Sending them product suggestions that match their searches also increases the chances of the customer making more purchases.
• Shipping updates: Send shoppers shipment updates until their order arrives. The updates can contain personalized alerts about ongoing discount offers, upcoming promotions, and more, to bring customers back to your store.
• Marketing communications: Send out email newsletters or nurture campaigns to re-engage shoppers and encourage repeat purchases.
• Offer fast customer support wherever your customers are: According to a study by AMA, you can use live chat to improve post-sales customer support by 39%. Lowering your average response time can also help meet customer expectations. 
• Take an omnichannel approach: Customers expect to get support on their preferred channel, whether that's SMS or Facebook Messenger. Make that a reality for them by employing omnichannel customer service. 

Strengthen your pre-sales activities with Gorgias

Gorgias can support your support agents and your customers as they embark on a pre-sales journey. While most customer support teams and tools focus on troubleshooting issues, Gorgias focuses on generating more qualified leads and improving conversion rates for online stores.

Book your demo to try out the most revenue-generating helpdesk in ecommerce. 

If you’re using a live chat for your ecommerce business — to support customers, drive sales, or both — you already know it’s a powerful tool. 

That tool is made even mightier with analytics and reporting. Stores that don’t track support metrics for live can only take educated guesses to answer questions like:

• When should we staff live chat? How many agents do we need at any given time?
• How does live chat support performance compare against other channels?
• How does live chat compare to other pop-ups in terms of conversion rates?

Below, we’ll cover key live chat metrics that go beyond your response and resolution times. You’ll also get finer insights about how your chat strategy boosts your bottom line.

Don’t have live chat yet? Check out our list of the best live chat software (or, the best chat apps for Shopify or BigCommerce).

What do online shoppers expect from live chat?

Before you look into analytics and reporting for your live chat operations, it’s good to get a baseline of how customers expect live chat to fit into the customer experience. 

Here are some statistics that highlight what your shoppers expect from your live chat support operations.

• 42% of customers want a response within 60 minutes on social media (Convince & Convert).
• Customers expect a response within 45 seconds for live chat (Com100). 
• 53% of customers are willing to wait only three minutes to talk to an agent on the phone (BizFluent).

People want to get things done as quickly as possible. Ultimately, it’s best to start where you are and work on improving internally. But, when you know how you stack up to the competition, it can help. 

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Next, take a look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should follow. 

📚 Read more: 

• 25 Customer Support Metrics To Measure Your Team’s Impact & How to Calculate
• 22 Live Chat Statistics You Need To Know in 2022

The Live Chat Support Metrics You Need to Follow

To get a complete understanding of where you stand and where your customer support team can improve live chat efforts, here are the metrics you should follow (in no particular order). 

1) Contact rate

Your contact rate is the percentage of active customers that reach out to you via your chat strategy on any given day, month, year, or other period of time. 

Contact rate is tricky: If customers are messaging you with pre-sales questions, that’s a good thing. They’re deep in the consideration phase and need information about sizing, returns, or shipping to make a purchase.

But if people are messaging you with post-sales questions (like “Where is my order?” or WISMO) then you have a problem. A high number of these chats indicates some part of your customer support information is unclear or confusing.

Remember that avoidable customer support interactions — not counting pre-sales interactions, which are more like a sales consult — are actually 4x more likely to drive customer disloyalty than customer loyalty. A low rate indicates that customers are able to find everything they need without your help.

How to measure contact rate

The formula for determining your contact rate is to divide the number of customers who reach out via live chat in a time period, such as month, by the total number of customers. Then multiply by 100.

For example, if you had 500 customers in December, and 153 of them reached out for help via live chat, your contact rate would be 30.6%.

If you use a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can see contact rate broken down by channel, agent, and more right within the platform. 

Tips to improve contact rate

Analyzing why customers contact you via live chat will help you reduce your contact rate.

For example, most customer inquiries tend to be about shipping and tracking. If you’re getting many questions about your shipping policies, that indicates you haven’t made this information clear and easy to find on your website.

Another solution is to add self-service options to your chat widget for frequently asked questions, such as shipping info, parcel tracking, and order cancellation. You can add these as buttons or as automated chatbot replies.

📚 Read more: 

• Customer Service Messaging: Tips and Templates for SMS + Conversational Channels
• Playbook: How Berkey Filters Drove Customer Adoption of a New SMS Support Channel

2) First-response time

Your first-response time (FRT) is also called your average wait time — essentially how long it takes to reply to a new chat from a customer. Specifically, it’s the response to the very first chat message from a customer.

Customers have high expectations when using a chat widget. According to Klipfolio, users expect a response via chat within 90 seconds, compared to 24 hours for email. That’s fast! But that’s why customers prefer chat when it’s available. 

Your first interaction with a customer is a crucial time to secure their trust and loyalty with a fast response. Faster responses mean a higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, which we’ll discuss further in depth later on.

Your first-response time should become shorter over time. When you see a decrease in first-response time without a spike in website traffic, it is a cause for concern and should be looked into. 

How to measure FRT

Your first-response time can be calculated by determining how long it took to respond to every first chat message within a time period, then dividing by the number of messages.

For example, if it took 74,000 seconds to respond to 800 tickets in September, the first-time response rate was 92.5 seconds, on average.

Thankfully, a helpdesk such as Gorgias can provide this number to you.

Tips to improve first-response time

Improving your first-response time requires you to have support agents available if your live chat is set to active. 

Make sure to set your business hours in your chat widget. This way, after-hours customer inquiries will be converted to an emailed ticket. Appearing offline also sets customer expectations, letting them know a response won’t come until the next day.

Keep an eye on those metrics to determine if there are particular days, hours, or seasons when incoming chats rise and more support employees need to be on hand.

3) Average response time

While the first-response time is all about that initial chat message, your average response time is how long it takes to respond to any and all incoming chat messages.

That first-response time benchmark of 90 seconds still applies here — you don’t want your customer to get a quick first response and then grow frustrated as responses take longer.

How to measure average response time

To calculate this, add up the total time your team has taken to respond to requests during a specific time period, then divide by the number of responses sent during that same time period.

For example, if your team spent 72,800 seconds responding to 800 messages, that’s an average chat response time of 91 seconds.

Again, Gorgias’ metrics can provide this number for you.

Tips to improve average response time

This is another opportunity for self-service options and chatbots to shine.

Gorgias’ Automation Add-on allows you to add self-service order management options and quick response flows to your chat widget, giving customers instant answers to their questions or options for tracking or canceling orders.

4) Resolution Time

The resolution time is how long it takes for a customer’s issue to be resolved after they first reach out via chat. This is also called the average resolution time (ART) or average handle time.

This includes the entire chat duration, starting when they send that first message, and ending when they’re satisfied their concern is addressed.

Use this metric to determine how long it typically takes to solve your customers’ problems. Like first-responses, they want a resolution as quickly as possible. 

Similar to first-response time, customers expect a quicker resolution when they start a chat session then when they reach out via email. 

How to measure resolution time

The average resolution time is calculated by dividing the total duration of all chat conversations in a given time period, divided by the number of customers.

You can also see this number in your Gorgias help desk metrics.

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Historical view of average resolution time

Tips to improve resolution time

You can use automation to speed response and therefore resolution times. 

Study your incoming messages to determine frequently asked questions and create templated responses (or Macros, in Gorgias) and then create automated Rules to respond to tickets.

In Gorgias, these templated responses can be sent quickly and efficiently, and can even pull in personalized customer information like names, order numbers, and tracking info.

5) First-contact resolution rate

Also called the first-contact resolution (FCR) rate looks at how many incoming chat sessions are resolved with a single reply. These are also called one-touch tickets.

Solving issues with a single reply is the best-case scenario with incoming chat requests. As we mentioned earlier, high-effort customer support interactions drive disloyalty, so keeping these interactions short and sweet will increase customer satisfaction.

How to measure first contact resolution

The FCR rate is calculated by finding the total number of chats resolved with a single reply, and dividing it by the total number of incoming chats that were eligible to be resolved with a single reply.

Tips to improve first contact resolution

In addition to automation and self-service options we’ve already discussed, this is a KPI where it’s worth digging into your chat history.

If a chat session took more than one response to be resolved, ask yourself: 

• Is there a way you can speed up the process for next time? 
• Is there a new automation you can add? 
• Could you practice forward-resolution by proactively answering common follow-up questions in the first response?

Complex issues will inevitably take several responses to solve, but aim to streamline as many common chat requests as possible.

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6) Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score

While a little more complicated to calculate, your customer satisfaction (CSAT) score is the ultimate measure of the impact your customer service is having.

The customer satisfaction score measures how a customer feels about your store’s customer support. Was it quick? Was it low-effort? Was your customer service team helpful? It’s estimated that businesses lose $75 million every year due to poor customer service, so keeping customers satisfied is no longer optional. 

By contrast, happy customers lead to conversions and repeat business. Gorgias analyzed over 10,000 businesses and found that raising CSAT score by just one point — from 4 to 4.9 — lifts overall revenue by 4%. 

According to Retently, the average CSAT score for ecommerce businesses is 75. Customer satisfaction rate can also be expressed as a number from 1 to 5, 5 being the best.

How to measure CSAT

To get your CSAT score, you need to survey customers who have interacted with you via chat. This can be done with a survey tool, or with Gorgias.

Ask customers who used your chat: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your experience today?” Then, add up how many gave a rating of 4/5 or 5/5 and divide that by the total number of responses. Multiply by 100 to get your CSAT score.

Using Gorgias, customers are asked to rate their experience, showing you a CSAT store in your dashboard out of five. We recommend our customers, all of whom are ecommerce merchants, aim for a CSAT score of 4.8.

Tips to improve CSAT score

Using Gorgias, you can review all chat ratings as all customers are given a post-chat survey. You can use this to examine common themes for any interactions scored below 4 stars. What issues keep coming up? Do particular products result in lower scores than others?

You can also follow-up with customers who gave a low score to further investigate what went wrong with these detractors.

Issues that can impact your CSAT score — and that you can work on improving — include:

• Long wait times for responses
• Multiple messages needing to be sent
• Long resolution times

📚 Read more: 

• 9 Ways To Improve Your CSAT Score and Response Rate
• Evaluating Your Customer Service Program: Why, Challenges, and KPIs That Matter

7) Customer effort score

This is a complement to your CSAT as well as NPS (net promoter scores). The customer effort score measures how much effort a customer felt like they had to put in to resolve their issue.

This score should be as low as possible. Ideally, you want customers to find your customer service to be effortless, breezy, and efficient. High effort interactions will in turn hurt your CSAT and your revenue.

According to The Effortless Experience, 96% of customers who had a high-effort customer service experience feel disloyal to the company after.

How to measure customer effort score

Similar to your CSAT score, customer effort can be measured with a survey that asks customers to rate how easy their experience was on a scale of 1 to 5.

Find the percentage that said “very easy” and then subtract the percentage that said “very hard.” This will give you a score of between -100 and 100.

Tips to improve customer effort score

The more messages a customer has to send via your live chat, the more effort it will take on their part to resolve the issue.

Using automation, increasing response times, and aiming for one-ticket resolutions will improve your customer effort score.

📚 Read more: Customer Delight Is A Losing Strategy in Ecommerce: Here’s What’s Better

8) Conversion rate

Is your customer service chat tool actually leading to more sales, also known as conversions? Are you successfully turning chat requests into sales?

Chat is a great way to contribute to your conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy since you talk with customers while they’re still on your store (and hopefully contemplating a purchase).

Pre-sale information given via chat, like finding the right size or inquiring about your return policy, have a high chance of leading to a sale. 

How to measure conversion rate

The conversion rate is calculated by total sales after a customer support interaction divided by total number of tickets.

The Gorgias dashboard shows you how many tickets led to sales within five days, which reveals your conversion ratio. Apply a channel filter for live chat to show how many of these were the result of a live chat session, 

As well, Gorgias shows you the hard numbers of your total sales numbers that came from a support interaction.

Tips to improve conversion rate

The best way to improve conversion rate from chat is to reach out to more customer shopping in real-time with chat campaigns. These automated pop-up conversations can be used to ask whether website visitors need help, know how to qualify for free shipping, or offer a discount.

Research shows that people who use live chat are 3X more likely to complete their purchase before leaving a website. 

9)Total sales

How much money is being generated via live chat support? This is simply your total sales made from customers who used your live chat.

How to measure total sales

While you could calculate this manually, in Gorgias statistics you can filter your sales by channel, segmenting only those sales made after a customer used live chat.

Tips to improve total sales

Like your CSAT score, your total sales are a reflection of your overall ability to quickly meet customers’ needs via chat.

Compare individual sales with either very high or very low totals and look for patterns. Do more responses lead to a higher or lower total? Does answering FAQs have an impact? These are important questions that become much easier to answer when you can see the total sales over a given period, agent, channel, request type, and so on. 

📚 Read more: Customer Service ROI: How To Measure and Improve Value

10) Automation rate

This is a measure of how many customers are getting help via chat using automated options like self-service order management and quick response flows.

These can be created in the Gorgias chat widget by adding buttons for customers to get information like tracking, or answers to FAQs, without a live agent needing to respond.

For example, luxury jeweler Jaxxon’s chat widget contains the following self-service options for a proactive customer service approach.

By using automated responses, Jaxxon reduced live chat volume by 17% while lifting on-site conversion rate by 6%.

How to measure automation rate

Gorgias Statistics lets you see how many customers use the automated options you have set up in the chat service.

Tips to improve automation rate

Set your chat widget up for success by reviewing incoming tickets to determine which common inquiries can be satisfied with either self-service order management or quick answer flows.

11) Template usage

Templated responses in live chat save your support agents time and, of course, give quicker responses to customers.

At Gorgias, these pre-written responses are called Macros. They are similar to custom fields and they can help automate some of your communication within your live chat support operations. 

Preparing Marcos for use in live chat will improve your average response time, resolution time, and lead to more one-touch tickets.

How to measure template usage

In Gorgias Statistics, you can see how often Macros are used in responses to customers.

Tips to improve template usage

Monitoring which types of responses take the most amount of time for agents to resolve will help you create new templates for them to use. On the flip side, seeing a template is used very frequently could point to shortcomings elsewhere.

For example, if you notice that the shipping macro seems to be over-used, you can link out to shipping details and/or update your shipping policy page to make the information easier for customers to find. Then, you may not need to reply to as many tickets in the future. 

12) Chat campaign responses

Your chat widget can do so much more than track orders. With Gorgias’ live chat, you can set up campaigns that deliver customized messages for different scenarios. 

For example you can set up chat automated chat messages that:

• Offer a product-specific offers or discounts
• Give a link to a style quiz
• Spark conversation around specific products
• Offer a personal, virtual stylist
• Prevent cart abandonment

For example, here’s a chat campaign from Jaxxon to recommend “VIP level support.”

It’s great to try new things with your chat widget but you should always be mindful to measure and evaluate their results.

How to measure chat campaign responses

The best way to track responses to your campaigns is to set up an auto-tag in the Gorgias help desk to see how many people respond when prompted with a campaign message.

Here’s how Jaxxon could set up auto-tagging for the above campaign:

Tips to improve campaign responses

All chat campaigns should be tracked with performance metrics to determine if they were successful, how they can be improved on next time, and if you need to do further A/B testing.

In the Gorgias dashboard, you can:

• Track overall revenue generated by a campaign
• Measure increase in sales for products targeted with a chat campaign
• Track the usage of promo codes

You can also include a UTM link to track clicks.

13) Missed chats

The whole point of live chat is to provide immediate customer service in real-time. Missing a chat has a deep impact on that customers’ satisfaction so you need to keep a keen eye on missed messages in the chat queue and use them to inform your customer service strategy.

How to measure missed chats

Simply review your incoming chats on a regular basis, even daily, to see if any incoming chat sessions didn’t receive a response. Keep track of this number and see if you can get it to the ideal number: zero.

Tips to improve missed messages

As we discussed before, it’s vital to set your business hours in your live chat. For after-hours, include a contact form so that even if you’re not online at the time, a ticket is created.

If you notice you’re missing a lot of chat messages at a particular time of day, or day of the week, that’s an indication to rethink your live chat agent staffing schedule.

You should also pay attention to each individual agent and if they’re missing tickets. That could mean there’s a need for additional training to improve agent performance.

Never stop optimizing

What’s up with your ecommerce live chat support operations? If you don’t know, you can never optimize your processes.

A live chat will only drive sales if it’s being used in a way that best supports both your business and your customers. Keeping a close eye on all the above data will allow you to finetune your live chat performance.

Remember, satisfied customers are loyal customers, and loyal customers are ones that will come back again and again.

Gorgias puts this important data at your fingertips. Our customers can see everything they need to nurture outstanding customer support strategies. Sign up for your free trial today and experience the difference. 

From providing you with powerful marketing tools to automating time-consuming processes that are clogging up your schedule, choosing the right extensions to integrate into your Magento store can offer a wide range of benefits. 

‍If you already use Magento (also called Adobe Commerce), you’re probably familiar with Magento Extensions and how they work. If you’re currently considering Magento, consider taking a look at our comparison post of Magento and Shopify, another leading ecommerce platform. 

Let's take a look at the top 19 best Magento extensions available today, including their standout features and common user reviews.  

What Magento extensions are and how they work

Unlike plug-n-play ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce, Magento does not come equipped with many pre-built solutions for marketing, sales, customer support, and inventory management. Fortunately, Magento and Magento 2 do offer a large number of downloadable extensions available on the Magento Marketplace. 

These Magento extensions offer many powerful benefits, spanning from:

• Creating automated email and SMS marketing campaigns complete with personalized product recommendations 
• Providing your customers with streamlined and efficient customer support

Take a look at our list to improve the user experience on your online store and ultimately help you generate more sales.

Best Magento extensions for marketing

Creating effective marketing campaigns for your online products isn't always a straightforward task. 

By providing a range of marketing capabilities and automating much of the campaign creation process, these Magento extensions for marketing can go a long way toward making your marketing efforts more profitable.

1) Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an email marketing solution that provides several convenient tools designed to improve the results of your email campaigns. The tool also makes the process of managing those campaigns more efficient. 

With Klaviyo, you can look forward to tools such as automated email and SMS marketing flows, list segmentation tools, and a user-friendly dashboard that provides an abundance of helpful analytics and insights about your email marketing campaigns.

Unique features

• Includes a number of triggers such as cart abandonment triggers, price drop triggers, and back-in-stock triggers for automatically launching email flows
• Provides a wide variety of customizable email templates
• Powerful segmentation filters for segmenting your email and SMS lists

What users think of this app

• User-friendly and easy to set up
• A wide selection of pre-built triggers to choose from
• A capable email builder that makes it easy to create branded emails

Use Gorgias? Take a look at how Klaviyo integrates with Gorgias. 

2) Yotpo

Yotpo is an ecommerce marketing platform that provides Magento store owners with unified, data-driven solutions for SMS marketing, loyalty and referrals, reviews, and more.

With Yotpo, you can create custom loyalty programs, send high-converting text messages shoppers actually want to read, and collect authentic customer feedback — all in one place.

Unique features

• A library of SMS flows and campaign templates paired with powerful segmentation capabilities 
• Enriched data across all Yotpo products, granular performance metrics, and customer-level insights
• The ability to use SMS to send mobile-optimized review requests or notify loyal customers about their VIP status and reward points

What users think of this app

• Provides plenty of features for managing loyalty and referral programs
• Useful segmentation and targeting features
• Review request templates and flows lead to a boost in product reviews

Use Gorgias? Take a look at how Yotpo integrates with Gorgias.

3) Magento 2 Instagram Connect

With roughly a billion monthly active users, Instagram is a social media platform that offers a wealth of marketing opportunities. 

The Magento 2 Instagram Connect extension allows store owners to automatically sync products from their Magento store to their Instagram account and provides a number of other Instagram marketing tools and features such as CTA buttons for Instagram photos and an Instagram widget that lets you display your Instagram feed on your website.

Unique features

• Allows you to add a CTA button that appears when someone hovers over one of your Instagram photos
• A performance report to showcase which photos are generating the most orders
• The ability to fetch photos using hashtags from Instagram to your Magento 2 store

What users think of this app

• Great for improving the visual appeal of a Magento store
• Plenty of customization options
• Data from the performance report is very helpful for optimizing Instagram marketing campaigns

4) MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate

Boosting organic traffic with great SEO is one of the most reliable long-term ecommerce marketing strategies. With MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate, store owners are able to access numerous SEO tools and features, including XML & HTML sitemaps, automatic cross-linking, advanced rich snippets, layered navigation, and many more.

Unique features

• Built-in SEO reports allow you to detect and resolve SEO issues
• Canonical URLs to eliminate duplicate content
• Extended breadcrumbs provide enhanced on-site navigation

What users think of this app

• Product SEO templates are great for optimizing the metadata of product listings
• Compatible with both Magento 2 Venia PWA theme and Hyva theme
• Automatic redirects easily eliminate 404 errors

📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to ecommerce SEO for beginners.

Best Magento extensions for sales

In 2020, ecommerce sales accounted for 14% of all retail sales, up 9.5% compared to 2011. If you would like to take a large bite out of this ever-growing ecommerce pie, here are three feature-rich Magento sales extensions worth checking out.

5) CedCommerce HubSpot Integration

CedCommerce HubSpot Integration is an app that allows you to sync your Magento store with HubSpot, providing tools such as marketing automation workflows, a camping ROI tracker, and abandoned cart recovery tools.

Unique features

• Syncs data between HubSpot and Magento in a single click
• Sends out automated reminder emails to customers who have abandoned their cart
• Provides a variety of automated marketing flows based on RFM segmentation

What users think of this app

• Saves time integrating customer data from a Magento store to Hubspot
• Provides a convenient dashboard for managing marketing and sales from a single platform
• Great list segmentation features

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6) Magenest Zoho CRM Extension

Zoho CRM is a CRM service designed to help ecommerce store owners store and segment customer data in order to better target their marketing campaigns and see upselling and cross-selling opportunities. 

With Magenest Zoho CRM Extension, you can automatically sync data straight from your Magento store to your CRM, putting the capabilities of Zoho CRM at your fingertips without the need to spend hours syncing data manually.

Unique features

• Can automatically sync customer data, promotion data, product data, and more from Magento 2 stores to Zoho CRM in real time
• Lets you control how often data syncs to avoid straining your server
• Has a no-code setup experience thanks to the API-based connector 

What users think of this app

• Open source and customizable
• Easy to set up and use
• Great customer support

7) Magediary Product Scheduler

Magediary Product Scheduler is an extension that offers useful countdown timer widgets such as product launch timers and promotional timers. This extension also allows you to send automated email notifications to customers who subscribe for scheduled products.

Unique features

• Provides email notification templates for letting customers know about new product launches and promotions
• Allows you to create both "coming soon" and "ends soon" countdown timers
• Allows customers to sign up to be notified when a product is back in stock

What users think of this app

• Email notification templates and countdown timer widgets are both highly customizable
• Countdown timers boost conversion rates during promotions
• Responsive customer support

Best Magento extensions for customer support

According to data from Invesp, investing in new customers is between 5-25 times more expensive than retaining existing customers. By helping you provide exceptional customer support, these customer support Magento extensions will help you keep your retention rates as high as possible while at the same time minimizing your customer support team's workload.

8) Gorgias

Gorgias is a customer support platform that provides everything you need to improve the quality of your customer service while also reducing the burden of your customer support team. 

With Gorgias, Magento store owners are able to access powerful tools and features such as live chat support, a centralized dashboard for support agents to work from, self-service options for reducing support ticket volume, and a wide range of Rules and Macros for automating tasks such as ticket generation and prioritization. If you are looking for an all-in-one solution to customer support, be sure to check out Gorgias today.

Unique features

• Fast-loading live chat widgets that won't slow down your website
• Allows support agents to manage customer support tickets from a single, convenient dashboard
• Capable of automating a wide variety of tedious customer support tasks

What users think of this app

• Automation features allow store owners to reduce the size of their customer support staff
• Great for prioritizing customer inquiries to ensure that the most important inquiries receive the fastest possible response
• Great for revenue generation from conversions and long-term loyalty

9) Sparsh Technologies WhatsApp Chat

With 1.6 billion users across the globe, WhatsApp is by far the most popular messaging app in the world today. The WhatsApp Chat extension by Sparsh Technologies allows Magento store owners to create a customizable plug-in that lets customers contact the store's support team via WhatsApp directly from the website. Best of all, this extension is completely free to download and use.

Unique features

• Admin is able to change the default WhatsApp mobile number and push message from backend
• Customizable contact button
• Free to download and use

What users think of this app

• Easy to set up and use
• Store owners can enable and disable the plug-in with a single click
• Plenty of customization options

10) Amnesty FAQ and Product Questions

One of the best ways to reduce your customer support ticket volume is to provide customers with plenty of resources for finding the answers to common issues on their own. With the Amnesty FAQ and Product Questions extension, you can easily create FAQ pages and product questions designed to provide customers the answers they need without them having to contact your customer support team.

Unique features

• FAQ pages are SEO-optimized
• Built-in GDPR consent, reCaptcha, and Search Terms Report functionality
• Social sharing buttons and product question ratings for encouraging audience involvement

What users think of this app

• Plenty of customization options
• FAQ widgets and tabs provide customers with convenient access to self-service resources
• Provides valuable insights about the questions that customers are asking most commonly

Best Magento extensions for payment & security

Making it as easy as possible for customers to pay for their purchases is a vital objective if you want to optimize the conversion rate of your ecommerce website. With Magento extensions for payment and security, you can provide your customers with convenient payment options while also ensuring that their sensitive financial data is kept secure.

11) PowerSync mPower Subscriptions & Recurring Payments

The mPower Subscription and Recurring Payments extension by PowerSync is a solution that makes it easy for Magento store owners to create a recurring revenue business model. 

With this extension, you are able to create and manage subscriptions for your products and easily accept recurring payments from customers who sign up for a subscription.

Unique features

• Makes it easy to manage subscriptions from a single dashboard
• Allows you to create custom billing frequencies
• Automates subscription renewals and recurring charges

What users think of this app

• Unlimited customization options
• Provides a simple checkout experience for both normal and recurring orders
• Sends out helpful automated notifications to both customers and merchants

12) Stripe Payments

Stripe Payments is one of the most popular payment processing solutions for ecommerce store owners. 

With Stripe Payments, merchants are able to provide customers with convenient and secure payment options that support almost every currency and payment method in existence today.

Unique features

• Supports 135+ currencies and payment methods
• Provides checkout flows for optimizing the checkout experience on your website
• Promises 99.99%+ uptime

What users think of this app

• Great for detecting and preventing fraudulent payments
• Frequently updated with new features
• Makes it easy to issue both virtual and physical gift cards

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📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to ecommerce payment processing.

13) Aheadworks Smart One Step Checkout

Streamlining the checkout process as much as possible is a vital goal for merchants that want to reduce their abandoned cart rate. With Smart One Step Checkout from Aheadworks, store owners are able to provide customers with an Amazon-like, one-click checkout experience by easily adding or removing predefined fields on the checkout page.

Unique features

• Allows you to track the conversion rate and performance of each checkout field
• Makes it easy to edit every aspect of Magento's default checkout process
• Supports a wide range of payment methods

What users think of this app

• Insightful built-in reports for highlighting checkout process bottlenecks
• Also available for Magento 1 stores
• Automated address suggestion further speeds up the checkout process

Best Magento extensions for shipping & fulfillment

According to data from eFulfillment Service, the average cost to fulfill an order for online retailers is 70% of the order value. 

‍In order to keep your shipping and fulfillment costs as low as possible while also providing a great customer experience, it is essential to create an optimized shipping and fulfillment process, which is something that these Magento extensions for shipping and fulfillment are sure to help with.

14) ShipStation

ShipStation is an extension that provides a number of tools and features designed to help store owners streamline their order fulfillment process, including the ability to:

• Import orders from multiple stores and channels
• Perform bulk updates 
• Automation processes for quickly processing and fulfilling orders
• Compare rates across carriers and print shipping labels
• Send customers automated shipping updates

Unique features

• Capable of connecting with multiple platforms/marketplaces
• Makes it easy to set up shipping rules to automate your order fulfillment process
• Offers an inventory management dashboard for viewing stock levels, allocating stock, and setting inventory alerts

What users think of this app

• Makes it easy to combine multiple orders into a single shipment
• User-friendly and easy to set up
• Automations make creating shipping rules far less time-consuming

Use Gorgias? See how we integrate with ShipStation. 

15) Amasty Pre Order

Having products go out of stock is something that can often lead to lost business. With Amasty Pre Order, though, merchants can enable customers to easily pre-order products that are out-of-stock or products that have yet to be released.

Unique features

• Customizable pre-order buttons and notes
• Module is read-compatible with GraphQL
• Enables pre-order functionality for all types of products

What users think of this app

• Provides valuable insights on customer preferences and product demand for improved inventory management
• Allows you to set discounts on pre-order products via rules
• Fully-optimized for mobile devices

Best Magento extensions for data & reporting

Quality data is the fuel that powers successful ecommerce stores. With these Magento extensions for data and reporting, you can leverage a variety of tools for collecting and analyzing customer data, providing you with the insights you need to optimize the customer experience on your online store.

16) WeltPixel Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce

WeltPixel Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce is a solution that automatically syncs data from your Magento store to your Google Analytics account, allowing you to easily track and analyze an incredibly wide range of data regarding your customers and website visitors.

Unique features

• Google Ads conversion tracking
• Provides data on product impressions and product clicks based on a variety of criteria
• Tracks stock status, product review count, product review status, and much more

What users think of this app

• The free version of the extension includes an impressive offering of features
• Full-page cache and varnish cache ready
• Paid version includes one-minute installation GUI and one month of free support

17) Mopinion Feedback Surveys

Customer surveys are one of the most effective tools for gathering zero-party customer data. With Mopinion Feedback Surveys, you are able to embed customizable survey forms on your Magento website. Mopinion Feedback Surveys also allows you to create email surveys and app-based mobile surveys as well.

Unique features

• Allows you to integrate feedback forms into your email campaigns
• Provides a variety of customizable feedback form templates
• Easy-to-install SDKs for iOS and Android allow you to integrate feedback forms into your native mobile apps

What users think of this app

• Feedback form templates offer a broad range of customization options
• Easy to set up and use
• Lots of useful integrations

Best Magento extensions for finance & accounting

Keeping up with the finances and accounting for your ecommerce store can often be a complex and time-consuming process. Thankfully, these Magento extensions for finance and accounting provide plenty of helpful tools for keeping you organized and automating a lot of tedious accounting tasks.

18) Magenest QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is arguably the most comprehensive ecommerce finance and accounting solution on the market today. 

With the Magenest Quickbooks Online extension, you can automatically sync data from your Magento store to QuickBooks Online, making it easy for you to utilize QuickBooks' many tools and features for more accurate and efficient accounting.

Unique features

• Magento 2 data changes are automatically updated to QuickBooks Online
• Allows you to map payment methods to deposit accounts
• Syncs sales orders, invoices, credit memos, customer data, tax rates, and more from Magento 2 to QuickBooks Online

What users think of this app

• Allows you to connect multiple sales channels to a single account
• Easy to set up and use
• Provides the option to sync and edit data manually

19) TaxJar Sales Tax Automation

With sales tax rates differing from state to state, county to county, and city to city, keeping up with how much sales tax you owe for each purchase can quickly become dizzying. 

TaxJar Sales Tax Automation, however, is able to automate the entire sales tax life cycle across multiple sales channels, including sales tax calculations, nexus tracking, and reporting/filing.

Unique features

• Automates sales tax compliance across 11,000 different jurisdictions
• Automatically calculates and collects the appropriate sales tax amount at checkout
• Address validation ensures that the correct sales tax amount is collected for the jurisdiction where the customer is located

What users think of this app

• Excellent customer support
• Provides detailed and easy-to-understand sales tax reports
• Allows you to automatically submit returns and remittance to each jurisdiction

Activate better customer service for your Magento store with Gorgias

From a powerful ticketing system and auto-responders to live chat and customer intent detection, Gorgias has what your Magento store needs to provide a top-notch customer experience. 

Check out our Gorgias for Magento page to learn more about the best customer platform for ecommerce brands.

Quick summary:

• Positive scripting means using polite, pre-written responses to make customers feel acknowledged and taken care of
• Benefits: less frustrated customers, better customer satisfaction, and faster first response times
• Negatives: can make customer service teams sound overly friendly or robotic and may lead to slower resolution times when agents rely solely on scripts

A great customer experience relies on much more than positivity and kindness — your customers expect personalization at scale, self-service options, and concrete benefits like free shipping. That said, using the right words is an important factor in customer conversations.

Positive scripting is one practice that can help your customer service representative steer customer interactions toward desired outcomes (like upselling shoppers and bringing first-time customers back for a second purchase).

However, over-relying script templates in customer support is a shortcut to unhelpful customer care interactions. Read on to learn how to make the most of positive scripting while also avoiding its pitfalls.

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What is positive scripting? (AKA positive phraseology)

Positive scripting is the practice of creating canned responses for customer service interactions that use positive language to limit customer frustration and promote desired outcomes. 

With positive scripting, brands can provide support reps with resources such as scripts and templates that they can use to help ensure positive customer interactions. These scripts and templates can also be used as training resources to provide reps with examples of constructive interactions and positive language.

‎Goals of positive scripting

There are several goals that brands can accomplish with positive customer service scripts, including:

• Promoting constructive customer service experiences that contribute to customer satisfaction
• Alleviating customer frustration and de-escalating angry customers
• Maintaining a consistent, positive brand voice
• Speeding up response times to customer queries

Where can positive scripting be used?

Positive scripting can be used across numerous contact centers and customer support channels. 

Like any customer support practice, positive scripting should be tweaked for each channel. 

Call centers

Providing support via a phone call requires reps to be quick on their feet, and this is where the practice of positive scripting first originated. 

Providing call center scripts to your call center agents can go a long way toward helping agents stay positive and on-brand when there isn't much time for them to formulate a response.

SMS support

Agents have a little more time to think about their SMS responses, but not much. Customers contacting your support team via SMS still expect swift responses, and positive scripting can help ensure that your SMS responses are swift, positive, and on-brand.

Live chat support

Like SMS, live chat conversations tend to be fast-moving — and this is one of the primary reasons why many consumers list live chat as their preferred customer support channel. 

With positive scripting and live chat tools like Gorgias live chat, you can provide fast, convenient, and helpful support via this advantageous channel.

📚 Recommended reading: Find out how Gorgias customer Ohh Deer used Gorgias chat to generate $12,500 in revenue — per quarter.

Email support

Support reps can typically put a little more time and thought into their email responses. 

Nevertheless, email templates with positive scripting can still help keep these responses positive and consistent while also enabling reps to respond to email queries more efficiently.

Social media support

Providing support via social media is a great way to meet your customers where they're most comfortable — and positive scripting helps keep these responses positive and on-brand. 

This is especially important when responding to comments and posts that other potential customers are likely to see.

Scripts and templates

Scripts, templates, and automated responses should all be built using positive scripting. 

If you use a helpdesk, chances are you can build a library of templates in the tool for agents to use during customer conversations. 

For example, you can use Gorgias Macros to build positive templates and autoresponses. Unlike most templates, Gorgias Macros pull customer information from ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, as well as other ecommerce tools (like Klaviyo and ShipBob) to automatically personalize the response. 

Even better? Thanks to automated Rules, Gorgias can automatically send these personalized templates to customers for basic interactions — like WISMO (where is my order), questions about shipping and return policies, and so on. 

This way, your customer service team time saves time while still fostering a great, personalized customer experience.

Customer support training programs

You can use positive scripting to guide customer service training by using customer support scripts with positive language as examples of beneficial customer interactions. 

This helps new team members get a feel for expectations regarding your company's voice and tone, which they can reflect in their individual customer interactions.

Benefits of effective positive scripting

When used correctly, positive scripting can improve the quality of a brand's customer support services in several key ways, including:

Enhance customer experiences to encourage repeat business

Did you know that 54% of customers say they would stop purchasing from a brand after just a single bad experience? If you want to promote customer loyalty and repeat business, it's vital to provide positive experiences throughout every step of the customer journey. 

Likewise, repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers, according to our data from over 10,000 ecommerce brands. Repeat customers place repeat orders, place larger orders, refer friends to your store, leave product reviews, and more. 

While many different elements go into crafting positive customer experiences, facilitating friendly and welcoming customer interactions with positive scripting is one important step.

Avoid or de-escalate angry customers

Using positive words and language may not solve a customer's problem, but it can help ease their frustrations. Positive scripting is an effective way to de-escalate angry customers — and a great way to prevent customers from ever becoming angry in the first place.

Become more consistent with customer communication and policies

Your customer service agents don’t just need to be positive, they need to follow the same policies and procedures, especially for common customer interactions. Using scripting to guide 

Of course, you can also specify which policies agents can bend, and when. For example, if repeat customers ask for an extension on refund eligibility, it’s probably in your best interest to permit the return rather than frustrate a repeat customer.

📚Recommended reading: Our guide to creating a customer service policy that actually provides value. 

Maintain a positive brand voice

Positive scripting helps you maintain a consistent brand voice, but, just as importantly, it also helps you maintain a positive brand voice. By using positive scripting to guide your brand's messaging, you can carefully (and intentionally) design your language to encourage customer satisfaction and beneficial outcomes.

Examples of positive scripting

A majority of customer interactions can become more pleasant and productive with positive scripting. Here are some scenarios that would benefit from positive scripting:

• Greeting: "Good [morning/afternoon/evening], thank you for choosing [Company Name]. How can I help you today?"
• Apologizing: "I'm sorry to hear about the inconvenience you've faced. Let me look into this for you."
• Offering assistance: "I'd be delighted to assist you with that" or "I'm here to make this right for you."
• Expressing appreciation: "Thank you for bringing this to our attention" or "We appreciate your business and your feedback."
• Providing assurance: "Rest assured, we'll resolve this for you" or "We'll do everything we can to make this a positive experience."
• Suggesting solutions: "Let me find that information for you" or "May I suggest an alternative solution?"‍
• Ending interactions: "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" or "I hope you have a wonderful day."

The pitfalls of positive scripting

The biggest potential drawback of positive scripting is one that we've already touched on; customers who contact your call center or other customer support channel want to feel as though they are talking to a real human and not a robot regurgitating a script. 

It's also vital to remember that customers are ultimately much more interested in resolving their problems quickly than in the language that your reps use. Many times, a simple message with the information they're looking for (such as a tracking number) will suffice with no flair or positivity required.

To prevent positive scripting from harming your customer interactions rather than improving them, here are a few other key mistakes and pitfalls to avoid:

• Not giving support team members the freedom to deviate from their script or inject their own flair
• Scripting entire customer interactions instead of just using scripts to save time on the most common, process-heavy elements
• Focusing too much on positive language and too little on actually solving customer issues as quickly as possible
• Writing scripts that sound too robotic or overly-friendly
• Using vague empathy statements rather than training your agents to be genuine and sincere

These are all serious mistakes to avoid if you want to make the most of positive scripting. When used appropriately, though, the benefits of this practice far outweigh its cons.

How to use positive scripting for customer service: 7 best practices

Positive scripting is a powerful tool for ecommerce brands to leverage, but it's important to use it correctly. Here are the seven best practices that you should employ to make the most of positive scripting (and avoid its pitfalls).

1) Use scripts as a starting point, not for the entire interaction

The scripts you give your support reps should be used for the most common, predictable part of customer interactions rather than mapping out the entire conversation. 

For example, your agents might use a script to greet customers and share information about your shipping policy (in response to a question about shipping). But, the agent should be flexible enough to include unique information or handle follow-up questions that may not be so predictable.

“I like to think of Macros as guidelines. When you open up a Macro, it's not 100% the right thing to say, because you have to match the customer’s tone and specific query. And it's up to the agent to understand that and adjust along the way — but Gorgias gives you the tools to do that.” 

— Leeor Cohen, Founder and CEO at CreateCX

If you require your agents to follow a script from start to finish, you risk sounding robotic and not providing agents with the flexibility they need to keep customers happy.

2) Prepare positive responses for common situations

Customers who cannot track their order, received the wrong item, or want to make a return are just a few examples of common situations where customers are sure to welcome a little friendliness and empathy — along with helpful information and clear next steps. 

Using positive scripting to create responses to these common situations helps your brand handle these issues consistently and ensure that they are handled with care and positivity. 

All you have to do is identify the questions that your support team receives most frequently and then load positive, brand-consistent responses into your helpdesk:

While each brand varies, some of the most common situations include:

• WISMO, or “where is my order?”
• Questions about refund and returns policies
• Questions about product availability
• Product-related questions (sizing, compatibility, ingredients, etc.)

3) Encourage customer support to enhance scripts with their own unique flair

Customer service reps should be free to deviate from scripts when needed or inject them with their unique flair. Encouraging your reps to use scripts as a guide rather than a word-for-word requirement ensures that your brand doesn't script away its human touch.

We love this example of an agent bending a policy and sparking up a delightful conversation:

4) Use scripts for training representatives

Along with using customer service scripts to guide customer interactions in the moment, you can also use them as resources for training your representatives. Once again, not everything that your agents say will be scripted, so ensuring they understand the principles behind positive scripting is just as important as providing the scripts themselves. 

Using scripts to showcase what positive customer interactions look like will allow your agents to leverage positive language even when they aren't using a script. For example, you can use scripts to demonstrate mock customer service interactions and then dive into the specifics of why the scripted responses you've created work well for those situations.

📚 Recommended reading: Our Director of Support’s guide to customer service training.

5) Avoid sounding like a robot

Several of the tips we've already covered are geared toward preventing support agents from sounding wooden or robotic, and this is an essential consideration when using positive scripting. 

By using scripts to initiate an interaction rather than scripting the entire conversation, giving agents the freedom to add their own flair to the scripts, and adding personality to the scripts you create, you can avoid this common pitfall of positive scripting. 

It's also vital for your reps to demonstrate genuine empathy throughout customer interactions to avoid sounding uncaring and robotic. This can't be easily scripted, making it important to ensure that your reps know how to adopt an empathetic tone and approach.

📚 Recommended reading: The ultimate guide to offering personalized customer service at scale. 

6) Nail the greeting

Your agent's initial greeting to a customer sets the tone for the rest of the interaction. It's also one of the easiest parts of customer interactions to script since the initial greeting will largely remain the same regardless of the customer's specific issue or sentiment. 

Stating the company name and the agent's name, asking the customer's name, telling them good morning/good afternoon, and assuring them that you are happy to assist them are all great elements to consider including in your greeting script.

7) Test, iterate, and refine to perfect your customer service interactions

Like almost every aspect of ecommerce, positive scripting in customer service is something you can continually improve with proper testing. CSAT surveys are one excellent way to gather customer feedback following a customer support interaction. You can use the feedback you gather from these surveys to fine-tune your customer support scripts. 

For instance, if many customers complain that your reps sound unempathetic or robotic, you may want to revisit the language of your scripts or encourage your agents to inject more of their own personalities. Throughout testing and refining your scripts, keep in mind that script building should be a collaborative experiment, with customer service teams working alongside reps and using data from past customer service interactions to guide the process.

Offer positive, fast, and helpful customer service with Gorgias

Positive scripting is one effective way to improve the quality of your brand's customer support and encourage more positive customer experiences. However, it's also just one small element of high-quality, revenue-generating customer support. 

If you would like to offer the type of fast, positive, and helpful customer service that will set your brand apart from the competition, it's important to use the right customer support tools.

With Gorgias' industry-leading customer support platform, you'll be able to leverage a range of advanced customer support tools and capabilities — all designed to boost customer satisfaction by improving both the speed and helpfulness of your support services. 

To get started offering positive, fast, and helpful customer support via the best ecommerce customer support platform on the market, be sure to sign up for Gorgias today!

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Maximizing peak season sales isn’t only about driving customers to your website. If website visitors people encounter a slow, unhelpful, or lackluster customer experience, they’ll click away before buying — flushing away all your marketing efforts and dollars.

In a recent webinar, Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience at luxury men’s jewelry brand Jaxxon, shared Jaxxon’s strategies for optimizing customer experience to maximize revenue during peak season. 

We’ll start with some of the most concrete strategies Jaxxon leverages, and wrap up with some bigger-picture insights on how Caela manages the team. 

You can also hear Caela share these tips herself by watching the webinar here.

How Jaxxon manages ticket spikes during peak season

Last year, Jaxxon had what Caela describes as a very successful but challenging peak season, when customer support tickets skyrocketed to three times normal levels. As a result, Jaxxon has stepped up its approach to optimizing customer support for efficiency and self-service during the 2022 peak season.

Here are the tactics and tools Jaxxons used to manage ticket spikes this year:

Provide self-service answers to FAQ in live chat

Jaxxon uses Gorgias Quick Response Flows to answer frequently asked questions during peak season. Caela and her team customize the questions and answers so that customers can get an instant response to common queries.

“We really noticed that adding automated self-service with Gorgias took part of the load off us. A lot of customers’ questions are answered by self-service, so then they’re happy and we don’t have to do anything further with those tickets,” Caela says. 

Automating these responses has two-fold benefits:

1. Customers get instant answers to questions — no wait time required
2. Agents actually have time for conversations that need a human touch

“If the customer has additional questions, then our agents have the time to have an authentic conversation with them, and give them a really great experience.”

Regularly review tickets to monitor performance and spot emerging issues

Caela regularly reviews recent customer conversations to monitor individual agent performance and identify areas for improvement or lessons learned. Using Gorgias tags — automatically applied to customer tickets for categorization and filtering — Caela can also get a sense for the most common customer questions and issues.

“If we're noticing a trend with a certain issue, then we want to solve it right away rather than figure it out weeks from now when it’s a bigger issue,” Caela explains. “So we don't want to only review tickets once a month. We want to do it in real time.”

The real opportunity for peak seasons is turning first-time customers into repeat shoppers

Jaxxon realizes that any peak season is a starting line, not a finish line. Providing an awesome first customer experience doesn’t just net a sale. It nurtures longterm relationships and turns happy customers into loyal brand advocates.

“We want to make sure that first shopping experience is really great — everything from the customer support to the shipping to the box it arrives in — so they want to come back and buy again. We listen to our customer reviews and we really want to help people have a great experience.”

Jaxxon invests in ongoing training and support to ensure its customer service agents have the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to do their job confidently and effectively.

“Sometimes customers are a little hesitant about buying something as expensive as solid gold online. And our agents can explain to them the difference between our products, or suggest an upgrade, or say, hey, would you like this bracelet to go with the Cuban link chain you bought last time?” says Caela. 

“For our agents to be able to upsell and cross-sell like that is super important for us — and it works.”

Quick Response Flows help Jaxxon open the door to some of these conversions. Providing quick, helpful answers about product restocks, sizing, shipping and more, lays a positive foundation that human agents can easily build on.

How Jaxxon sustains the team during peak seasons

One of the biggest challenges during any peak season is thinking ahead so that your team — not just your customers — succeed.

Plan ahead when it comes to coverage

First off, make sure you have enough customer service agents in place to cope with soaring demand. Jaxxon has increased its customer support team for this year’s peak season. 

Caela uses a zoning plan to stagger agents’ shifts across different time zones and locations, so there is always enough coverage for Jaxxon’s 24/7 customer support. She adapts this as peak season unfolds to meet shifting demand.

“Having open communication is essential. We always say there are no stupid questions. We’re here to help each other. Even though we work remotely, we're still able to communicate really well and work as a team.

Once the team is in place, get them ready. “Training your team is really important, and making sure they have the resources and support they need,” Caela says.

📚 Related reading: How to stand out during Black Friday with 18 marketing strategies

Maintain staff morale during crunch time

“Keeping morale high is so important for peak season, because it’s a busy time in life, not just at work,” Caela says. This is a unique situation in ecommerce — did anyone else have a turkey in the oven while answering support tickets during BFCM?

“Everyone gets stressed; sometimes people get sick. It's hard to sustain motivation sometimes. So we want to make sure everyone's really taken care of and set up for success. And we try to make it fun for the team.” 

A culture of mutual support among the Jaxxon customer service team is reinforced by team-based incentives to win gift cards, jewelry and more when certain targets are met.

“A positive attitude goes a long way to keeping people motivated. You get so much farther if you're kind and positive. And I’m very big on looking at difficult situations as learning experiences. And if someone is struggling, other team members will help them so we all rise together.” 

📚 Related reading: How Jaxxon offers motivates agents with rotating customer support incentives.

Lean on tools and systems to manage high demand

Having the right systems in place to manage customer support more efficiently is important at any time of year. But it has the biggest impact during peak periods when demand balloons. 

“You have to prepare for the worst, in terms of very high demand. Things just get crazier as peak season progresses! So make sure to have your self-service and automation set up and ready to go,” says Caela. “After last year’s challenges, we've made sure to have stronger systems in place this year.”

Jaxxon now uses Gorgias to manage all customer conversations. This helps the team work more efficiently in several ways:

• Seeing all customer conversations across different channels in one place, to avoid tab-shuffling and duplicated responses
• Filtering and sorting tickets, for easier prioritization
• Deflecting some questions to automated self-service, to free up customer service agents’ time for more complex customer conversations
• Bringing together all of a customer’s information, to enable more personalized service

Implementing self-service chat has cut Jaxxon’s live chat volume by 17%, yet increased conversions by 6%. Meanwhile, revenue generated by chat has shot up by an impressive 46%. The overall impact has been positive for customer experience and Jaxxon’s bottom line.

Read more about how Jaxxon uses Gorgias to speed up response times without sacrificing the quality of customer service.

Customer experience is vital to maximize peak season sales

By assembling a larger, well-trained customer service team and putting the right tools in place, Jaxxon is poised to continue delivering high-quality customer service this peak season — even when ticket volumes triple. Caela and her team are excited to dive into the peak season. With Gorgias by their side, they are ready to ride out whatever challenges come their way.

To hear the full story of Caela’s tips, lessons learned, and Jaxxon’s preparations for peak seasons, watch the webinar replay.

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Yohan Loyer started his job at Gorgias as the first Customer Success Manager for Europe. His current position is EMEA Partner Manager, with the goal of growing Gorgias’ presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The role boils down to building meaningful relationships and being a reliable, trustworthy partner for our agency partners. 

In this interview, Yohan tells his story and we learn more about his internal career development and the environment Gorgias provided to nurture it accordingly.

1) What is your role at Gorgias right now and how do you find it?

My role is to help our ecommerce agency partners:

• Understand the value of Gorgias
• Keep Gorgias top of mind when recommending customer service solutions to their customers
• Identify customers that are a good fit for Gorgias

As a social person who likes to interact with other people and has hands-on experience working with Gorgias customers, this role is a great fit for me. There really is no chance to be bored in Partnerships!

2) What did you do before Gorgias? What is your educational and professional background?

I did my undergraduate degree in international business in New York, where I got a scholarship to play for my university’s soccer team. Then, I did my master's in Business Consulting and Information Systems Management in France. 

Right after university, I worked as an IT consultant and then moved to Salesforce as part of the EMEA customer success team in Dublin. I worked as a Customer Success Manager (CSM) for 3.5 years, when my main focus was helping the company’s customers get the most out of the Salesforce platform and resources.

Apart from that, I have always been passionate about new technologies and how they impact the world, so continuing to work in tech and ecommerce at Gorgias is not a coincidence.

3) How did you find out about Gorgias and what made you apply to work here?

I was looking for a role in a fast-growing company in the ecommerce space with an innovative product, strong company culture, and competitive package. I did some research online and found out about Gorgias on an ecommerce blog, if I remember correctly. 

Gorgias had everything I was looking for. They were also hiring for their first Customer Success Manager in Europe at that time, so it was perfect timing for me to apply!

4) What are the roles you had at Gorgias and how did they change over time?

I was initially recruited as the first Customer Success Manager (CSM) in Europe. We already had one Onboarding Manager in Europe when I joined (Emna Charfi, who is now the manager of our Customer Success team). 

She was already working as a CSM with some customers (on top of her main role as Onboarding Manager). Even after I joined as the first full-time CSM in Europe, she continued as the CSM for some of our largest customers while I onboarded. 

After a few months, I took over as the Customer Success Manager for our largest European customers for about 1.5 years, before transitioning to the Partnerships team last July.

I worked closely with Louis Lavedan from the Partnership team when I was a CSM, so I got to see what Partnerships was like. When he moved to San Fransico, taking over his role as Partner Manager for EMEA seemed like a logical next step.

5) What training and resources did Gorgias provide to help you in your new roles? 

The Gorgias team has always been super helpful and available with me and new team members in general. 

Learning directly from colleagues has definitely been one of the highlights of my onboarding and overall experience with Gorgias. Whether it is answering questions on Slack, sharing screens, recording Loom videos, or jumping on a quick call, there is always a Gorgian ready to help!

6) How did your manager (or others at Gorgias) help you upskill and grow yourself?

The two managers I worked with both have hands-on experience with Gorgias customers and partners, and a genuine desire to be helpful and see their team members grow. They are always reliable and helpful when needed, which builds trust and promotes a culture of feedback and transparency. 

Gorgias as a company is obsessed with scaling and automating processes, and my managers have definitely lived up to those values and helped me become more efficient and see the big picture when working on projects.

At Gorgias, we are also lucky to have a best-in-class product and grow at a very rapid rate, which comes with a lot of super interesting challenges and opportunities. The company has a really unique positioning with an obsession for customer satisfaction, which all contribute to a great environment to work in.‍

7) How can you connect your experience with Gorgias's core values?

My experience at Gorgias so far has been very much aligned with our core values, especially “Customer first”, and “Maximize your impact”. 

We live and breathe for customers, automate time-consuming tasks, share best practices with the rest of the team, and try out new tools and processes — all with the end goal of providing a better product and experience to merchants who use Gorgias. 

Our managers highlight Gorgians who are living up to our core values weekly on our Slack channels, so we get to see first-hand all the great things our team does in accordance with our values.‍

8) What is your favorite thing about working at Gorgias?

As someone who worked closely with customers for all of my career, I think that my favorite thing at Gorgias is our huge focus on customer experience and satisfaction. Making our customers happy and successful, independent of their size, is our target and biggest investment as a company.

Whether it is reviewing our processes to make sure they benefit our customers, going the extra mile when helping our customers out, finding workarounds, prioritizing product features, or letting our customers get on a call with our highly available success and support teams, we are always doing things with our customers’ interest in mind.‍

9) If there is one thing you would like to change about the company, what would it be?

I guess it would maybe be the name of the company (haha). Simply because it’s hard to pronounce. Also, people don’t read or hear “Gorgias” for the first time and instantly know what we do. 

10) What's next for you at Gorgias (and how is Gorgias helping you get there)?

As I started my new role as EMEA Partner Manager recently, my focus is becoming a great Partner Manager, first and foremost. 

We have a pretty good presence and network in Europe, but it’s still in the early stages compared to the US. I am learning and getting a lot of help from our US team who built a very strong market presence and brand in the US, and I am super excited to help develop the Gorgias brand and customer base in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa!

Interested in joining Yohan and the rest of Gorgias team? Check out our jobs page to learn more about our benefits, interview process, and open roles.

Today, a wide range of software solutions exist to help ecommerce business owners better manage every aspect of their online store. However, creating the ideal technology stack for an ecommerce store is often easier said than done. To help you put together a tech stack that’s best suited for your unique business needs, we’ll review some of the top ecommerce tools on the market today, grouped by category. 

First, we’ll walk through what you need to know about building a powerful, easy to use ecommerce tech stack — without breaking the bank. 

What is an ecommerce tech stack? 

An ecommerce tech stack is the collection of digital tools, software applications, and platforms that an online store owner uses to run their business. These tools work together to optimize day-to-day tasks — across sales, marketing, customer service, order fulfillment and returns, payment processing, and other key areas — and reveal customer insights that can fuel growth.

If you’re curious about an ecommerce brands’ tech stack, try searching on builtwith.com, which scans the back-end of any website to see what technology it uses.

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Factors to consider as you build your ecommerce technology stack 

Today, ecommerce store owners have a broad range of solutions to choose from when it comes time to build their ecommerce tech stack. However, an abundance of options can also make selecting the best solutions a challenge. Here are the most important factors to consider: 

Cost

An ecommerce tech stack can consist of anywhere from 3-5 core tools to more than 20, depending on the size of your operations and how you approach the process. It’s vital to set a budget and keep it in mind as you weigh different solutions and plan tiers. If possible, balance it against the return on investment (ROI) for the particular tool or feature set (more on that later). 

Compatibility

Ideally, you’ll create a digital ecosystem of tools that integrate seamlessly and transfer data quickly and reliably. The ecommerce tools you consider should allow you to combine the features of multiple solutions, either through direct integrations or third-party integration tools. 

Ease of use

While all ecommerce solutions come with some degree of a learning curve, it's a good idea to prioritize user-friendly tools that are easy to install, set up, and use. Look for a knowledge base with tutorials and FAQs; expert-led training options can also help.

Customer support

Make sure the support solution aligns with your business hours and the channels you prefer, like email, phone, or live chat. Choosing a solution that’s backed by excellent customer support means you’ll have a reliable source of assistance if or when issues arise. 

Determining the order of tool additions 

Building the right tech stack, complete with all the tools and features your store could possibly need, doesn’t happen overnight. It’s best to focus on testing and approving the tools you truly need for your day-to-day operations. That way, you know that any other software or hardware you’re considering should integrate nicely with your must-have tools. 

For starters, an online store hosting platform will be the cornerstone of your ecommerce tech stack. From there, it’s up to you to decide which tools you add next. 

We’ve seen that many ecommerce store owners choose to prioritize their sales and marketing tools — after all, many of the other solutions on our list won't offer much value if your online storefront isn't attracting customers or ready to manage payments. Big picture solutions or add-ons, like the top tier of a user analytics tool or premium page themes, can come later on. 

Ensuring compatibility between tools 

When it comes to building the best possible ecommerce tech stack, integrations are key. Choosing apps that sync with one another allows information to flow seamlessly between them, cutting down on manual labor and user error and letting you get the most out of your stack. 

Most software platforms have an integrations or apps page where they list their official integrations. For instance, the Gorgias Apps page has a categorized, searchable database of the 80+ apps that integrate with its platform. For apps that don’t directly integrate, a tool like Zapier lets you easily set up workflows between them and doesn’t require much tech expertise to use. 

An email marketing platform that connects with your order fulfillment platform, for example, can enable you to send automated order tracking updates to your customers personalized with their name. A customer service solution that integrates with your social media marketing solution, meanwhile, can allow you to turn your social media channels into customer service channels.

A connected ecosystem provides far more value and functionality in the long run. By looking for compatibility between tools ahead of time, you can build an ecommerce tech stack that’s much more than the sum of its parts. 

Balancing your tech stack budget against potential ROI

Fortunately, the money you invest into building tech stack doesn’t disappear into thin air — it will offer real value and unlock revenue opportunities. As you consider the cost of different tools, it’s a good idea to weigh it against the potential ROI of each tool. 

At a high level, you can determine the potential ROI of each tool by weighing the expenses for a given time period — such as monthly subscription costs, licensing fees, additional users, and training or setup fees — against the potential gains. It can be tough to put the positive value of using a new tool into figures, however, consider gains like increased sales or reduced labor costs to start. 

We recommend creating an optimistic estimate (lowest cost and highest return) and pessimistic estimate (highest cost and lowest return) to get closer to an accurate number. For example, if your optimistic estimate suggests that an email marketing tool will increase your store's cash flow by 10%, then you could factor this estimated ROI into how much of your budget is allotted for this tool.

Ecommerce store hosting platforms

• Bluehost
• Hostinger 
• Cloudways 

The first solution that you will need to choose before you can get your ecommerce store up and running is a hosting platform. Hosting platforms allow you to build a custom ecommerce website — regardless of your coding experience — using simple drag-and-drop commands. 

Plug-n-play hosting platforms also offer services such as website hosting, website security, and payment processing on your behalf. If you would like to get started building your own ecommerce store using an ecommerce store hosting platform, here are the top platforms to consider:

Shopify

Arguably the most recognizable ecommerce store hosting platform, Shopify has certainly earned its reputation as a go-to choice for e-commerce sites. With Shopify, business owners are able to create attractive online stores in a matter of minutes by choosing from a broad variety of starting templates, then adding additional design elements and features from Shopify's ever-expanding library. 

Business owners can also integrate thousands of additional features into their online store by making use of the Shopify App Store — a store that sells thousands of third-party apps designed to integrate with Shopify websites.

Pros

• Mobile-ready
• Choose from thousands of third-party app integrations on the Shopify App Store

Unique features

• Integrated payment processing
• 24/7 live customer support

Check out Shopify’s integration with Gorgias.

BigCommerce

Like Shopify, BigCommerce is a web development solution that allows ecommerce business owners to create their own online stores within a no-code environment before offering a full suite of web hosting services that includes site security and payment processing. 

With that said, there are a few features that set BigCommerce and Shopify apart. For one, BigCommerce offers a long list of built-in sales features that don't require any additional installation, ensuring that you are ready to start moving products the moment your store goes live. Another nice feature of BigCommerce is that BigCommerce does not charge any transaction fees regardless of the plan that you choose.

Pros

• The ability to add an unlimited number of product variants
• Designed for scalability

Unique features

• Wide range of built-in sales features
• No transaction fees on any plan

Check out BigCommerce’s integration with Gorgias.

Magento

Magento differs from Shopify and BigCommerce in the fact that it is an open-source platform that is free to download and use. In order to build a website using Magento, though, you are going to need a certain degree of coding experience. The tradeoff for this steeper learning curve is that Magento allows you to build sites that are much more customized than what you could build using Shopify or BigCommerce. Magento also offers hosting services and a broad range of third-party integrations that can be purchased as add-ons.

Pros

• Unlimited customization options providing you know how to code
• Comprehensive answers to just about any question can be found on the Magento Forum

Unique features

• Detailed analytics and reporting
• Enhanced product browsing (i.e. the ability for customers to zoom in on product images, the ability to display stock availability, and the ability to display multiple pricing tiers)

Check out Magento’s integration with Gorgias.

Ecommerce marketing tools

• Ahrefs
• Canva 

According to data from The Drum, the total amount of money spent on digital ads increased 41% in the first half of 2021. If you want to keep up with econnerce industry competition that is increasingly spending more on advertising, it is essential to develop the right marketing strategy for your online store — and a big part of creating an effective marketing strategy is choosing the right ecommerce marketing tools. 

From providing insights about your visitors, to helping you conduct keyword research, to helping you manage your email and PPC campaigns, there are a lot of capabilities that come with developing the right ecommerce marketing tool tech stack.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a SaaS solution that automates the process of creating and managing email and SMS campaigns. With Klaviyo, you start out with pre-built campaign workflows that you can customize into your own email or SMS campaigns. From there, Klaviyo allows you to create automated triggers and segmented lists for your campaigns that will completely automate the process of sending the right messages to the right customers at the right times.

Pros

• An incredibly wide range of pre-built email workflows to choose from
• A convenient analytics dashboard that displays key campaign data

Unique features

• Multiple automation triggers such as cart abandonment, price drop, back-in-stock, and more
• A large library of integrations to pull data from other ecommerce tools and platforms into Klaviyo

Check out Klaviyo’s integrations here. 

Postscript

Postscript is a tool that integrates with Shopify stores in order to provide store owners with the ability to create and manage SMS marketing campaigns from one centralized dashboard. 

Given that SMS messages have a 98% open rate according to data from TechJury, SMS can be a powerful medium to manage, and Postscript provides all of the tools you need to develop and oversee effective SMS marketing campaigns: detailed reporting, tools for growing and managing your SMS subscriber list, and beyond.

Pros

• Create up to 65 different automation triggers
• Segment your subscribers using 40 segmentation filters, including historical Shopify data, SMS activity, data from app integrations, area codes, and more

Unique features

• Create multiple "text-to-join" keywords
• Create QR codes that can be used to opt-in to your subscriber list

Check out Postscript’s integrations here. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free analytics service offered by Google that is designed to provide real-time insights regarding how users find and use your website. With Google Analytics, you can see where your traffic is coming from, the pages that they visit, how much time they spend on each page, detailed demographics of your website visitors, and beyond. This detailed customer data helps you optimize your online store and marketing campaigns alike. 

Google Analytics can also connect with any ecommerce platform and offers an incredibly wide range of other integrations as well.

Pros

• Excellent data visualization features
• Create custom data reports

Unique features

• Perform keyword research using Google Analytics's Search Console
• Segment your website visitors and leads for more personalized and targeted campaigns

Learn how to set up and integrate with Google Analytics here. 

Canva

Canve is a simple, powerful design platform where anyone can design marketing assets for their website, social media, and more. While most designers prefer more powerful design tools, Canva’s extensive template library and simple drag-and-drop editing features make it the perfect choice for small business owners and single-person marketing teams. 

Pros

• Easy to use, regardless of technical or design skills
• Great free model

Unique features

• A large template library with pre-sized images for Instagram stories, Facebook banners, and so much more
• Great collaboration features to help facilitate brainstorming and feedback 

Ecommerce social media management

• Octane AI 
• ShopMessage
• Gatsby 

With billions of engaged users all over the globe, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are ripe with marketing opportunities. In addition to solutions for marketing to your social media audience, ecommerce social media management tools can also provide benefits such as automating the process of managing your social profiles and enabling you to turn your social media profiles into customer service channels. 

Sprout Social 

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that offers features like social listening tools for gleaning key insights from your social media audiences, automation tools for automatically scheduling and publishing posts, a centralized inbox for responding to comments and direct messages across multiple platforms, and rich analytics for gauging the results of your social media efforts. If you're looking for a single solution to empower your store's social media strategy, Sprout Social is a wonderful option to consider.  

Pros

• Offers a variety of powerful tools and features in a single solution 
• Intuitive and easy to use 

Unique features 

• Social listening tools automatically track and extract key insights from social conversations about your brand 
• Publishing and scheduling tools enable you to schedule posts for automatic publishing across all major social media platforms 

Check out Sprout Social’s integrations here. 

Gorgias

Gorgias's comprehensive customer service platform offers powerful social media management features such as the ability to respond to direct messages, comments, and mentions across platforms from a single dashboard, track sales generated by individual support agents via social media app, and create macros that streamline your day-to-day social media interactions. 

Pros

• Powerful, user-friendly social media features and integrations built specifically for online stores
• Offers a broad range of customer support tools to make Instagram, Facebook, and more part of a stellar customer experience

Unique features 

• A centralized, user-friendly dashboard for managing social interactions across platforms 
• Customizable rules and macros powered by customer sentiment detection

Check out all of Gorgias’s integrations here. 

Recart 

With over 146 million active users in the United States alone, Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular messaging platforms in existence. With Recart, ecommerce store owners are able to take advantage of this app's popularity by creating automated Facebook Messenger marketing campaigns. Recart also offers tools for helping you grow your Facebook Messenger subscriber list, as well as SMS marketing and list-building features.  

Pros

• Makes it incredibly easy to build opt-in popups and automated marketing flows 
• Offers a range of useful Facebook Messenger marketing campaign templates 

Unique features 

• Enables you to create cart abandonment reminders, welcome series, sales promotions, and a range of other automated Facebook Messenger campaigns 
• Provides customizable, fast-loading opt-in popups for growing your subscriber lists 

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Check out Recart's integrations here.

Ecommerce customer relationship management (CRM) tools

• Zoho CRM 
• PipeDrive 
• Monday Sales CRM 

Creating an optimized customer experience is a vital goal for all types of retailers, and ecommerce stores are certainly no exception. With ecommerce CRM tools, you can ensure that you are managing your all-important customer relationships in a way that is well-organized and largely automated, freeing you up to focus on other important tasks.

Attentive

Attentive is an SMS and email marketing solution designed to help store owners scale their subscriber lists and engage with those lists in a more personalized manner via enhanced segmentation and targeting. If you would like an all-in-one solution to SMS and email marketing, Attentive can offer everything you need to start building your subscriber lists and generating impactful campaigns.

Pros

• Makes it easy to ensure compliance with SMS and email marketing regulations
• Strategic guidance and resources designed to help store owners optimize their SMS and email campaigns

Unique features

• A design editor that allows you to easily create various sign-up units for your website, social media platforms, emails, and product packaging/in-person marketing initiatives
• Build custom integrations using Attentive's Public APIs and developer resources

Check out Attentive’s integrations here. 

Ecommerce sales tools

• Sender 
• Hubspot Sales Hub 
• Showpad 

Ecommerce technologies designed to help you optimize your store's conversion rate and grow its sales can be highly beneficial. Ecommerce sales tools are able to provide a number of capabilities, such as helping you create the ideal sales funnel for your site, helping your sales staff perform customer outreach, and providing you with a wealth of customer data that you can leverage to boost your website's sales.

Certainly

With Certainly, ecommerce store owners can create AI assistants that will guide their site's visitors to recommended products, walk customers through the checkout process, present customers with upsell opportunities, assist with returns, and more. These AI assistants also gather loads of valuable data during their conversations with customers that you can use to optimize the customer experience on your site.

Pros

• Create AI-assistant-guided sales funnels for your site
• Access much more detailed customer data that is acquired via customer conversations with your AI assistants

Unique features

• Certainly Webhook Builder allows you to completely customize your AI assistants
• A wide range of pre-made templates to speed up your time to market

Check out Certainly’s integrations here. 

EasyCall

Even in today's digital age, contacting customers by phone remains a lucrative sales strategy. With EasyCall, sales teams are able to manage every aspect of phone-based customer outreach from a single centralized dashboard. EasyCall also makes it easy for customers to get in touch with you by making it simple for you to create a business phone number and web-based call center.

Pros

• EasyCall can easily integrate with almost any CRM tool
• An intuitive call center tool allows for effortless collaboration between your sales and customer support teams

Unique features

• Create a web-based call center without the need to purchase any hardware
• Make international calls without paying international calling fees

Check out EasyCall’s integrations here. 

Ecommerce automation tools

• Zapier 
• Buffer 
• Jumplead

Automating time-consuming tasks such as managing email marketing campaigns or building new features into your website can free you and your team up to focus on other responsibilities. If you would like to leverage the power of automation on your website, here are two great automation e-commerce solutions to consider.

Alloy 

Alloy is a no-code automation solution for ecommerce stores that allows you to create triggers and automated flows with ease. Alloy is designed to integrate with a wide range of ecommerce tools and platforms so your system is ready to go when a specific event occurs within your store or one of the apps that you rely on, like a sale, customer message, page view, and more.

Pros

• Plenty of customizable triggers, conditions, and executable actions to select from 
• Capable of integrating with over 100 different ecommerce tools and platforms 

Unique features 

• Offers a variety of pre-built workflows in addition to the ability to create your own, customized workflows 
• Centralizes data from multiple applications and customer touchpoints 

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Check out Alloy's integration with Gorgias. 

Omnisend 

Omnisend is a tool that allows ecommerce store owners to create automated SMS and email marketing campaigns. In addition to templates to help get you started, Omnisdend also offers precision targeting and list segmentation tools, customizable triggers for launching automated campaigns, and in-depth reporting on the results that your SMS and email campaigns generate.

Pros

• Easy to set up and use 
• Affordable pricing plans with a completely free plan that offers up to 500 emails per month 

Unique features 

• A broad range of customizable email and SMS templates to choose from 
• Automated list segmenting automatically divides your subscriber lists into targeted list segments 

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Check out Omnisend's integration with Gorgias. 

Mesa

Mesa offers a wide range of automation solutions, including automating customer returns, order tracking, creating customer support tickets, and beyond. With Mesa's large library of pre-built automation workflows and its no-code workflow editor, you can build and customize just about any automation you can imagine — regardless of your coding experience.

Pros

• Makes it easy to build customized automations using only drag-and-drop commands
• A well-regarded support team for helping you make the most of Mesa's many features

Unique features

• A no-code workflow editor that allows you to customize Mesa's pre-built automations or create your own automation from scratch
• A vast selection of pre-built automation workflows

Check out Mesa’s integration page here. 

Ecommerce shopping cart tools

• X-Cart 
• Shift4Shop 
• AbanteCart 

Once you successfully direct a customer to the checkout page of your online shop, the battle is still far from over. In fact, the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is right at 70% according to data from Baymard Institute. Thankfully, utilizing the right ecommerce shopping cart tools can help you optimize your customers' checkout experience and keep your cart abandonment rate as low as possible.

Shopaccino

One-part shopping cart tool, one-part plug-n-play ecommerce platform, Shopaccino allows you to turn any website into an ecommerce store by providing features such as payment processing, campaign tracking, inventory management, and more. If you are looking for an all-in-one solution for creating and managing your online shop but would rather use your existing website, then Shopaccino is a great option to consider.

Pros

• Provides the ability to turn any existing website into a fully functional ecommerce store
• Provides APIs for connecting any ERP, accounting system, or other software solution

Unique features

• A large selection of free responsive themes to help you get started building your online store
• Automatically or manually generate coupon discount codes

Check out Shopaccino’s integrations here. 

Ecwid

Ecwid is a tool that makes it easy to add products and a checkout page to any website or social media profile. Like Shopaccino, Ecwid can be used to turn your existing website into a fully operational online store. Ecwid also makes it easy to sell across multiple sales channels and platforms, including in-person, on your website, or on your social media profiles.

Pros

• Easily add products and a checkout page to any existing website or social media profile
• Completely free to use

Unique features

• In addition to turning any website or social media profile into a point-of-sale, Ecwid also allows you to easily process and manage in-person sales and accept credit/debit card payments on the go or at your brick-and-mortar location
• Provides automated marketing features such as automated abandoned cart emails and automated PPC advertising

Check out Ecwid’s integrations here. 

Ecommerce web development tools

For brand-new stores, most of the tools listed in other sections will be enough to . However, as you grow, you may need additional web development frameworks to help you customize your store, improve efficiencies, and offer the customer experience your shoppers deserve.

Front-end web development

Front-end web development programming languages help you develop, design, and deploy your ecommerce website. They help make your website more interactive, eye-catching, and user-friendly. The main front-end programming languages are:

• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Stylizes and formats HTML documents
• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): The standard markup language for web pages
• JavaScript (JS): Adds more dynamic, interactive elements to your web pages

Back-end web development

If front-end web development is the aesthetics of the house, back-end web development is the plumbing, electricity, and everything else that operates behind the scenes to power the house’s — or your website’s — functionality. 

Back-end development is usually custom-built, and requires a few elements:

• Operating system: Windows, Linux, or macOS
• Web server: Apache, Nginx, Microsoft-IIS
• Databases: MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB by Amazon, Firebase database by Google, PostgreSQL
• Storage: Amazon Web Services (AQS) S3, Firebase Storage by Google
• Scripting language: Ruby on Rails, Java, Python, Scala, PHP, Spring, Groovy on Grails

If you’re interested in learning more about technical stacks for ecommerce, consider reading more about some of the most popular:

• LAMP Stack
• Python-Django
• MEAN Stack
• .NET Stack

And if this section on web development went over your head, don’t be alarmed. Most stores get away with simple no-code tools until they mature enough to hire outsourced or in-house developers to support. 

Ecommerce payment processing software

• Skio 
• Checkout Champ
• Recharge 

The ability to securely and conveniently accept payments from customers is a vital capability for any online store. Thankfully, these payment processing solutions make it easy for you to provide your customers with multiple payment processing options: Think of them like payment gateways that connect your store to flows of funds.

Shopify POS 

Shopify POS is a point-of-sale solution designed specifically for Shopify stores. It boasts a variety of advantages for Shopify users, including the ability to sync inventory, payments, and orders across multiple Shopify stores, create discounts and loyalty programs, and offer customers flexible shopping options like local pickup, local delivery, and ship-to-customer. 

Pros

• Easy and powerful integration with the Shopify platform 
• Provides useful inventory management tools in addition to payment processing 

Unique features 

• Allows you to process payments online, in store, or on your social media channels 
• Lets you create detailed customer profiles for use in loyalty and rewards programs 

Check out Shopify POS's integrations here.

PayPal

Once integrated into your online store, PayPal allows you to accept both credit/debit card payments as well as payments that are made using the customer's own PayPal account. PayPal also offers convenient point-of-sale devices that enable you to accept credit, debit, and PayPal payments at your brick-and-mortar location.

Pros

• Robust security ensures that your customers' sensitive financial data doesn't fall into the wrong hands
• PayPal speeds up the checkout process for customers with an existing PayPal account, making it much easier for your customers to complete their purchase and thus reducing your cart abandonment rate

Unique features

• PayPal Checkout allows customers to complete their checkout without having to fill in information such as credit card numbers and shipping addresses
• PayPal Marketing Solutions provides insights into how your customers are shopping

Learn how to integrate with PayPal here. 

Square

Like PayPal, Square offers both ecommerce and in-person payment processing solutions. While Square is best known for its point-of-sale devices that make in-person payment processing secure and convenient, Square can also be integrated with your online store to allow you to easily accept credit/debit card payments.

Pros

• Slightly lower fees than PayPal and other payment processing solutions
• Exceptional point-of-sale devices for in-person sales, including a free card reader

Unique features

• 24/7 live chat support
• Square offers a feature that allows customers to book appointments with your company through its website

Check out Square’s integrations here. 

Recharge

Recharge is a subscription billing platform for Shopify stores that allows store owners to sell subscription-based products and services. If you are selling subscription-based goods such as replenishable goods or subscription boxes, Recharge can help you manage the complex billing in a way that is easy and largely automated.

Pros

• Detailed analytics and reporting
• ReCharge is the only Shopify Plus partner designed specifically for subscriptions

Unique features

• A gifting function that allows customers to gift a subscription to another person
• Upsell workflows to help increase your average order value

Check out Recharge’s Tech Partners list of best-in-class integrations here. Or, see the full integrations directory. 

Ecommerce customer service software

• Zendesk 
• HelpCenter
• Help Scout

Excellent customer service is a key pillar of ecommerce success. With these ecommerce customer service software solutions, you can integrate live chat customer support into your website, create automated chatbots for handling common questions and customer support issues, and automate other time-consuming elements of customer support.

Gorgias

Gorgias is an all-in-one customer service solution built specifically for merchants in the ecommerce industry. 

The tool provides live chat customer support capabilities and self-service options such as a dedicated help center and knowledge base. This platform also offers a wide range of automations and macros for automating much of your customer service responsibilities. If you are looking for a comprehensive solution to ecommerce customer service that will save your customer support team time and resources and give your customers the help they need, Gorgias is an excellent solution.

Pros

• Gorgias centralizes all of your multichannel support tickets in one place, allowing your customer support team to edit orders, modify subscriptions, and refund payments without leaving the helpdesk
• Can connect with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento stores to bring your products and shopper history right into the helpdesk

Unique features

• Live chat customer support with the ability to automatically message customers first during key events
• Macros and rules that allow you to automate customer service tasks such as providing shipment updates or creating customer support tickets

Check out all Gorgias integrations here. 

Stella Connect

Stella Connect is a tool designed to help business owners manage remote customer support teams. With Stella Connect, you can manage your entire customer support team from one centralized dashboard, or integrate with Gorgias for an even more robust solution for remote teams. You can also schedule one-on-one meetings with customer support agents, provide agents with real-time customer feedback and more, making Stella Connect an excellent choice for business owners who rely on remote workers as their customer support staff.

Pros

• Centralizes and streamlines all aspects of remote customer support team management
• Provides detailed customer data that you can use to improve your customer support performance

Unique features

• Create and implement automated customer support workflows
• Create rewards and incentive programs for customer support agents

Check out Stella Connect’s integrations here. 

Still not satisfied? Check out our list of the best:

• Customer service software on the market
• Customer service software for Shopify stores

Ecommerce chat tools 

• LivePerson 
• ChatBot 
• ManyChat 

Installing chat tools on your website is one of the best ways to boost order value while making customer support more convenient for your customers. In fact, nearly 80% of businesses say offering live chat features has positively impacted sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.

Chat solutions for ecommerce stores can come in two different forms: live chat and automated chatbots. Implementing a live chat solution lets customers connect with a live support agent via a chat widget on your website. Chatbots, meanwhile, are AI-powered chat tools that auto-reply to common customer questions and issues according to rules you create and macros and resources you build ahead of time. 

In both cases, ecommerce chat tools can be a powerful way to make your support channels more accessible to customers while reducing the workload of your support team. Here are the tools that can help you do it.

Gorgias 

Gorgias offers a fast-loading and easy-to-install live chat widget that lets customers easily connect with a support agent any time they visit your website. In addition to live chat widgets built into your ecommerce store, Gorgias also gives you the power of live chat support via Facebook Messenger and SMS. For common questions and issues, Gorgias offers rules and macros that can be used to create automated responses, allowing you to quickly address the questions your brand receives most and turn them into sales opportunities.

Pros

• Gorgias's fast-loading live chat widget won't slow down your website 
• Your live chat support agents can manage conversations across multiple platforms from a single dashboard  

Unique features 

• Provides support agents easy access to key details, like shopper history and inventory levels, during any live chat conversation 
• Allows you to automatically trigger live chat campaigns based on a variety of events and customer actions 
• Includes customer sentiment tools to automatically sort chat-based requests by priority and keep tickets organized 

Learn more about the Gorgias live chat tool here. 

Ada  

Ada is a solution that provides AI-powered chatbots for customer experience, sales, and support purposes. In addition to automated customer support chatbots that are able to address common questions and issues, Ada offers chatbots that will proactively engage customers when they visit your store. These proactive outbound messaging chatbots can be used to automatically deliver timely content to customers that is personalized based on their actions and interests.  

Pros

• No-code automation and one-click integrations make Ada easy to set up and use
• Chatbots deliver personalized responses based on customer data that feel like an interaction with an actual human agent 

Unique features 

• Intent and sentiment detections for delivering relevant, personalized responses 
• Capable of automatically routing customer inquiries to your sales or customer support team 

Check out Ada's integration with Gorgias. 

Still not satisfied? Check out our lists of the best:

• Best live chat apps for Shopify
• Best live chat apps for BigCommerce
• Best live chat apps for Magento 2 Stores
• Best live chat apps for overall ecommerce
• Best live chat apps (industry agnostic)

Ecommerce returns and shipping tools

• Returnly
• LateShipment.com 
• Shippo 

Managing returns and shipping is a hassle that most online store owners would rather do without. Fortunately, there are high-quality tools available that allow you to automate many of the responsibilities associated with handling shipping and returns. By providing customers with self-service return options, automatically sending out shipping updates, and more, the following two tools can go a long way toward streamlining the logistics side of your business.

ReturnLogic

ReturnLogic is designed to automate the entire returns process by enabling you to create automated return workflows, automatically updating your inventory, and making it easy for you and your customers alike to track the status of returns. ReturnLogic also provides complete visibility to your customer support team, making it easy for them to access a customer's purchase history and issue refunds and returns.

Pros

• Creates a completely transparent returns process that is easier for both your customers and support agents to navigate
• Provides analytics on your returns that you can use to lower your return rate

Unique features

• Barcode scanner functionality that allows you to update the status of a returned item with a simple scan
• 3PL and ERP integrations that allow you to seamlessly connect ReturnLogic with your existing inventory management systems or logistics provider

Check out ReturnLogic’s integrations here. 

Wonderment

Wonderment is an order-tracking platform that seeks to reduce customer support tickets regarding order status by providing customers with automated shipping updates. With Wonderment, you can automate shipping notifications via email or SMS, send internal notifications regarding delayed or lost orders, and create custom, fully-branded shipping alerts.

Pros

• Seamless and customizable shipping update automation options
• Helps stores be more proactive about resolving issues that could otherwise lead to customer support tickets

Unique features

• View the status of all of your shipments from one dashboard
• Integrates with Klaviyo, making it easy to send customized and automated shipping update emails

Check out Wonderment’s integrations here. 

Loop Returns 

Encouraging exchanges for returned products rather than refunds is a great way to reduce the often substantial impact that product returns have on a store's bottom line. With Loop Returns, online store owners can create a customized product return portal where customers can return their purchases and manage exchanges without needing to contact the support team, among other helpful features. 

Pros

• Customizable product return portals allow customers to manage returns themselves and reduce your support team's workload 
• Meaningful metrics provide insight into your returns and refunds and identify supply chain, positioning, and other issues 

Unique features 

• Enables customers to automatically apply the value of their return to any order using the "Shop Now" feature
• Allows you to apply variable bonus credits to customers who choose to exchange their returned product

Check out the Loop Returns integration with Gorgias.

ShipBob 

More of a logistics service provider than an application, ShipBob is a service that allows ecommerce store owners to ship their products in bulk to ShipBob warehouses across the country. Once you've delivered your products, ShipBob then takes over all inventory management and order fulfillment responsibilities on behalf of your online store — picking, packing, and shipping products to customers as they're ordered. 

Pros

• ShipBob completely eliminates the burden of order fulfillment, including managing product returns 
• Strategically located warehouses allow you to offer faster shipping to locations across the country 

Unique features 

• Includes built-in reports and analytics that provide a window into product performance 
• Offers a comprehensive help center that will help you master the platform and resolve any issues that you might experience 

Check out ShipBob's integration with Gorgias. 

AfterShip 

Providing customers with the ability to easily track their shipments is one of the most important parts of creating an optimized post-purchase experience. With AfterShip, you can create customized order tracking pages that allow customers to follow the location and status of their orders on your website. AfterShip's user-facing dashboard also enables you and your staff to easily monitor purchases and returns. 

Pros

• Simplifies the tracking of purchases and returns for both your staff and your customers 
• Plenty of customization options make it easy to create tracking pages that are on-brand and optimized for your store theme

Unique features 

• Provides a range of automated post-purchase workflow templates, such as shipping notifications 
• Provides detailed analytics around your shipping performance and post-purchase experience 

Check out AfterShip's integration with Gorgias.

Add Gorgias to your ecommerce tech stack to give your customers the top-notch service that keeps them coming back

From boosting your sales to streamlining the customer support process, creating a tech stack for your ecommerce store that is complete with the best ecommerce solutions can offer a wide range of advantages. At Gorgias, we are committed to helping our clients improve the quality of their customer support while at the same time making their entire customer support process more efficient with our industry-leading ecommerce customer support solutions. 

See for yourself how Gorgias can help you provide your customers with the service they deserve — try out Gorgias today!

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Free shipping has become so ubiquitous in ecommerce that shoppers now expect it. 

According to a survey conducted by Forbes, 77% of respondents abandoned their cart because they were unhappy with the shipping options. 84% made a purchase because it qualified for free shipping. 

Free shipping isn’t always an option for ecommerce stores though, especially for those with small margins or where shipping is expensive for every order. 

These are the best strategies for how to offer free shipping, even if you’re unsure it’s something your business can afford. 

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Is offering free shipping in ecommerce worth the cost?

Free shipping has become a key differentiator in a very crowded ecommerce ecosystem, with 75% of customers now expecting it on all orders. 

Offering free shipping can drive more revenue for your business, encourage repeat business, decrease cart abandonment, and even pull customers away from your competition. 

Let’s be clear: Offering free shipping for all products is not sustainable for most businesses. But free shipping is not all-or-nothing. Below, explore why providing free shipping in some capacity is worth the expense for your business. 

Encourage customers to become repeat buyers

One survey found that 90% of consumers consider free shipping to be the primary factor driving them to shop with online retailers more frequently. And, according to Gorgias, repeat shoppers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers, on average.

When customers are online shopping, they remember easy experiences, which includes not having to pay for shipping when they find something they love. A stress-free experience (without unpleasant surprises at checkout) creates loyal customers who want to shop with your business long term. 

📚 Recommended reading: Learn why customer experience is a largely untapped revenue stream for most ecommerce brands. 

Incentivize higher average order volume (AOV)

On top of that, some free shipping models encourage customers to place larger orders, generating more revenue per customer.

Take the minimum order value model (what you might call the Amazon not-Prime model), where shipping only becomes free once the cart reaches a certain subtotal. Depending on which study you prefer, at least 84% — and perhaps as many as 93% of customers — have added items to their cart to qualify for free shipping, increasing average transaction value and potentially total revenue per customer.

Sway customers away from competitors

When you offer free shipping and a competitor doesn’t, that single difference can pull new customers your way — and away from the competition. When 90% of consumers consider free shipping their top incentive and a full 60% of them expect free shipping no matter what, offering it is a huge differentiator for your customer base. 

📚Recommended reading: 7 Strategies for Creating a Customer-Centric Post-Purchase Experience

Decrease cart abandonment

One firm determined the overall rate of cart abandonment in ecommerce stores is north of 75%, and unexpected charges (including shipping charges) at checkout are the top culprit.

In other words, providing free shipping — and keeping other unexpected fees out of the checkout process — will reduce cart abandonment and increase conversion rate for typical ecommerce businesses.

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Is your online store ready to offer free shipping?

Making the decision to implement free shipping isn’t always as simple as flipping a switch. It takes careful planning and even more careful execution. Consider the following factors to help you understand the cost of free shipping for your business and decide if it’s the right move for you.  

Understand how much shipping costs your ecommerce business

The demand for free shipping has changed the way that small businesses choose to operate. For example, writer Amanda Mull at The Atlantic reveals how free shipping priorities (and algorithms favoring the vendors who offer it) have hurt numerous small business owners on Etsy. 

If you’re operating on razor-thin margins and you’re already struggling to be price-competitive, pivoting to an always-free shipping model might not be feasible. Even if your margins are healthy, for many smaller ecommerce retailers, blanket free shipping isn’t sustainable or feasible—nor are the extra costs that come with it.

Next steps: How to calculate shipping costs for your business 

On a spreadsheet, compile the shipping costs for every product you sell — from the smallest and lightest to the largest and bulkiest — to all four corners of the US (if you’re a US-based store) and anywhere you ship internationally. 

This cost will differ based on your preferred shipping carrier, too. Compare rates between FedEx, UPS, and USPS to see who has the most affordable option — we’ve linked shipping calculators for each above. Once you have these numbers, calculate your average shipping cost. Then, multiply it by the average number of orders you get in one month. 

You’ll also want to look at your best-selling items and calculate how much it costs to ship them, as you’ll likely be sending these out more often than other items in your catalog. 

Don’t worry about exact numbers here. The goal is to get a ballpark number to compare with your monthly revenue. If your estimated shipping costs will put you in the red, free shipping may not be the best option (even with the bump in orders). If this is the case, consider qualified or flat-rate shipping instead — more on both below. 

📚 Recommended reading: Our list of shipping best practices for ecommerce businesses.

Consider flat-rate shipping instead

Offering a flat-rate shipping charge is one way to give customers a low-cost shipping option without absorbing the entire cost yourself. 

Even if you can’t afford free shipping, charging one flat shipping cost for all orders on your site incentivizes larger orders. And, if you can keep the flat rate low, it can convince customers who just want to make a small order to convert. 

Set up flat rate shipping in Shopify

Setting up flat rate shipping is quick and easy if you use Shopify: Here’s how to do it.

Determine your free shipping limit

Most brands can’t support universally-free shipping. That’s why a qualified free shipping option based on factors like order size or location is such a good option. 

The most straightforward way to offer qualified free shipping is to set a minimum order amount. But in terms of your bottom line, this minimum threshold needs to be high enough that you aren’t losing money on most transactions.

Here’s a formula for calculating your free shipping threshold:

Free shipping threshold = (Average shipping cost per order / gross profit margin percentage as a decimal) + average value of an order

Free shipping threshold = ($10 / .30) + $50

Free shipping threshold = $83.33

The result you get from this formula is the average amount at which free shipping won’t create a loss for you.

Now in some cases that figure will be too high to be all that relevant. “Free shipping on orders $350+” can make sense for some retailers, but not those with an average ticket of $50.

Fit Small Business gives additional formulas for calculating a minimum threshold that still operates at a loss. 

Consider free shipping for returns

Customers hate paying for return shipping. If you can afford it, letting shoppers return an item for free is a great way to avoid driving them away. It also can create repeat business, low-effort experiences, and encourage loyalty. 

Of course, free returns leave you vulnerable to expensive spammers and order spikes. So, tighten up your return policy and try to incentivize exchanges over returns to protect lost revenue.

Find other ecommerce differentiators besides free shipping

Ecommerce is a wide field, and your business is competing for only a small slice of the market. Look for differentiators with lower cost pressures and high levels of impact that may be unique to your industry or market.

Free shipping isn’t the only thing that matters. Fast delivery also makes a difference in many industries and markets. Can you outmaneuver your competition by offering next-day shipping, even at a premium price? Perhaps your customers will be willing to pay for faster service if it isn’t available elsewhere.

Here are a few other areas you might explore in search of other ecommerce differentiators:

• Unique services
• Ecosystem effects (think Apple: “Our products all work better together, so stick with us across our catalog”)
• Value-adds (freebies, discounts on future orders, etc.)
• Multiple shipping and delivery options, including fast or flat rate
• Eco-friendly shipping or packaging approaches

Similarly, you may not be able to prioritize free shipping until you figure out other logistics like inventory management, order management, order fulfillment, order tracking, and returns management.

How to offer free shipping on a budget

If you’re ready to put together your free shipping strategy, use these tips to craft a program that’s enticing to online shoppers without destroying your bottom line.

1) Increase product prices to absorb the cost of shipping

According to research from the Baymard Institute, 48% of shoppers abandoned their cart because the extra costs were too high. People like the transparency of seeing one price without getting surprised by additional fees at checkout. 

Speaking generally, most customers would prefer to pay $50 for an item that ships free than spend $45 on the same item, only to discover an additional $5 charge for shipping in their shopping carts. Even though you’re passing shipping costs onto the customer in other ways, you still give buyers the perception of lower costs overall. 

Consider raising your prices to include shipping costs to limit surprises at checkout and increase transparency. 

2) Offer a “free shipping for orders over” model to incentivize higher AOVs

Offering free shipping when a customer reaches a minimum price threshold can be a powerful strategy for raising ticket value.

Customers will frequently add more items to reach that threshold, increasing average order value (AOV), overall revenue, and your business’s order volume as a whole.

To make it easy for customers to see how close they are to free shipping, add an app to your ecommerce store (like the Essential Free Shipping Bar for Shopify stores) that shows progress visually. For example, Gorgias customer OLIPOP makes it easy for folks to see how many more packs of soda they need to purchase to get free shipping. 

This is also a great way to build upselling into your strategy. When customers are looking for additional items to meet the free shipping threshold, consider showing items that pair well at checkout. This automation is easy to add via the app store if you’re on Shopify, and you can see how OLIPOP sneaks in suggestions in the screenshot above.  

If you’re going to offer completely free shipping, make sure you use it as a marketing tool and make it very clear to shoppers. For example, Woxer uses a banner at the top of its site to announce that it offers free shipping across the US no matter the order total.

A cohesive and realistic shipping strategy is highly valuable to any company that ships products to people because it is part of your brand image.

📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to creating an ecommerce shipping and fulfillment strategy. 

3) Offer subscription-based products to increase LTV

In a survey conducted by Salesforce for CFO, more than half of survey respondents said that 40% of their revenue was made up of subscriptions. 

A subscription format is powerful because it ensures repeat purchases and raises the overall lifetime value (LTV) of customers who opt in. If you choose to become part of the subscription economy, you could choose to offer free shipping on subscriber orders only. That way you limit the amount of free shipping you give, and further incentivize shoppers to sign up for a subscription. 

4) Limit free shipping to certain items, customers, or locations

Stores with wide product catalogs that include many low-dollar items may not be able to offer blanket free shipping. But, you can limit free shipping to certain high-dollar product categories, select items within those categories, people who live within a certain distance, or VIP customers.

Here are a few approaches you can use to limit free shipping: 

• Shoppers must reach a designated spend threshold
• Free shipping is limited to members (like Amazon Prime or Madewell Insider) 
• Free shipping is limited to shoppers with a certain number of points in a loyalty program (a service like LoyaltyLion can help you manage this) 
• Shipping costs are location based (For example, US only if your store is located there) 
• Products that cost over a certain dollar amount automatically qualify 

5) Partner with a third-party logistics company to offer free (sometimes two-day) shipping at scale

Partnering with a third-party logistics company allows you to split inventory across multiple fulfillment centers throughout the nation. That means they’ll end up closer to customers’ homes, which reduces shipping costs because of location proximity, and means that you can offer faster shipping for less cost. 

ShipBob is a great option for this, as they’re a trusted global fulfillment company.  

Take care of your shoppers with the Gorgias + ShipBob integration. Sync shipping data with your helpdesk, reduce tab-shuffling, and help you improve customer experience during fulfillment. 

6) Optimize your packaging for cost

Shipping fees are calculated based on item weight, size, speed, and distance to destination. And the size and weight of your packaging contribute to that cost. Cutting down on the dimensions of your packaging where possible and using lighter-weight mailers can lower the cost of each package. 

📚Recommended reading: 8 Tips to Minimize Shipping Costs and Maintain Quick Delivery

7) Create a limited-time free shipping offer

There’s nothing quite as powerful as a ticking timer, whether it’s a 15% off coupon that’s only good for the next hour or a sale that only lasts for the weekend. Discounts are powerful, but free shipping can be just as enticing.

Consider adding free shipping promotions to existing promotional events such as holiday sales, store anniversary sales, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and other seasonal events pertinent to your industry and market.

Time-limited holiday sales can be effective, but they also tend to be some of your busiest sales windows in any given year. If you could use some additional help with your logistics this upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday, check out our complete guide to BFCM logistics.

📚Recommended reading: The 12 Best Shipping Software Tools for Ecommerce Stores

Provide world-class customer service with Gorgias

Free shipping is often one key to a world-class customer experience in ecommerce. But whatever you choose to do with your shipping policies, you absolutely must pair it with world-class customer service and support. Customers will appreciate your free shipping, but they’ll love you (and show it through repeat business) when you outpace the competition in terms of customer service.

Gorgias is an all-in-one customer service and helpdesk platform built for ecommerce businesses like yours. It integrates with a variety of different apps, like LoyaltyLion, Attentive, and Klaviyo. We operate at the speed of ecommerce, empowering you to serve and scale like never before. We also offer support for logistics like free shipping and order management, largely thanks to our many ecommerce integrations.

Ready to see what Gorgias can do? Get started for free right now!