85% opted for automated product guides while 15% chose costlier live chat. Total Gym Fitness is hoping the helpful guides will turn more smartphone browsers into buyers.

Shoppers on smartphones may be more likely to research products on their devices than buy them, so the faster e-retailers can get consumers to the content they need to make a buying decision the better. And the less the retailer has to spend to provide that information the better.

Total Gym Fitness LLC, a retailer selling weight training equipment, discovered in a test between Oct. 8 and Oct. 29 that its site visitors on smartphones were five times more likely to click on automated, self-service product research guides rather than use live chat, which is more costly than self-service options. Total Gym Fitness uses TouchCommerce, an omnichannel retail technology and analytics firm, as its vendor for the live chat system and product research guide. TouchCommerce’s services start around $50,000 and can range into the millions depending on a client’s e-commerce and m-commerce needs.

The automated guide appears as a button on the bottom of mobile web site product details pages and reads “Best gym for you.” When a visitor touches the button, she goes through a five-question survey about her fitness needs and goals, and ultimately the guide displays a recommendation for that shopper. Total Gym added the mobile automated product guide feature last year. Consumers also can touch a button to initiate live chat instant message conversations with agents.

39% of Total Gym’s online orders involve TouchCommerce assistance, with 70% of those sales resulting from live chat exchanges between customers and agents.

In the test, Total Gym displayed the guide option to about half of smartphone visitors and the live chat button to the other half during early stage website navigation. Of the 22,000 buttons displayed, 657 consumers touched a button: 100 consumers chose chat and 557 chose the automated guide.

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“This is likely because they are using their smartphones for browsing and may not be quite ready to engage with a live agent or place their order yet,” says Joe Crowley, Total Gym’s vice president of marketing.

Total Gym hopes to break the “casual browsing mentality” of the smartphone shopper and boost mobile conversion rates with the automated guides. The automated guides are designed to quicken the research process and more quickly get consumers to the point where they are ready to purchase, says George Skaff, TouchCommerce’s chief marketing officer. 

“On the smartphone, the attention span of the consumer is shorter,” Skaff says. “And with a short attention span you need to narrow the selection and get to the bottom line of what they are looking for.”

During the October test period, 89% of Total Gym’s online orders came from consumers on desktops, 5.6% tablets and 5.4% smartphones. Total Gym would not say if conversion rates have changed since the test period. From 2013 to 2014, however, Total Gym has seen smartphone traffic increase by 66% from Q3 2013 to Q3 2014.

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Follow mobile business journalist April Dahlquist, associate editor, mobile, at Internet Retailer, at @MobileInsiderAD.

 

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