Introducing Message Mate by OwnerListens

YOU NEED TO BUY SOMETHING. Maybe it’s a birthday present for your daughter, a replacement battery for the garage door remote, or simply just milk. Up until a few years ago, you would typically plan a trip to the store to purchase your desired items.  You may have to drive there and search for parking or perhaps take public transport, and you would definitely have to stand in line to pay. At least a 30 minute ordeal. Then, things became easier. Instead of driving to a store, today you can order almost anything online. Simply head to the nearest computer, select an item, pay, and it will arrive at your doorstep.

Well, guess what? That’s changing too! Ordering from a computer is so 2014. Today, it’s all about mobile. Cell phones and tablets are quickly and  steadily becoming consumers’ device of choice for making online purchases.

Recent Cyber Monday data from Adobe shows that in 2015, “Mobile [including smartphones and tablets] accounted for 49 percent of shopping visits… resulting in 28 percent of online sales.” If  you think 49% sounds impressive, check out sales figures from Thanksgiving Day: Adobe tells us that incredibly “for the first time, mobile exceeded desktop shopping visits at 57 percent.” Additionally, 43% out of the referenced 57%, or more than 75% of all mobile shopping visits, were on smartphones.

Let us write that again: this recent Thanksgiving Day (and a similar stat is true for Black Friday), more than ¾ of all mobile online sale visits came from smartphones!

So what does this translate to if you’re an online seller?

Number one, you should probably have a mobile friendly web site, or have your site hosted on a mobile friendly platform such as Squarespace or Shopify.

Number two, you need a mobile based customer engagement platform for your mobile shoppers. Sure, web based chat is nice if your customers are both patient and on a computer. But how often does that happen? <answer – less and less> Browser based live chat is not a good experience on mobile but messaging is. Customers want to be able to send you a short text based message, from their phone; and they expect to receive a reply in minutes to the same device, regardless of their physical location.

Number two is especially important since, as Brad Johnsmeyer of Google Insights recently wrote, “More than half of holiday shoppers say they plan to use their smartphones in free moments throughout the day to get their holiday list done” [emphasis added]. We doubt a single one of those mobile shopping browsers would open a live chat to ask a question about a product they found on their phone. They’ll just move on to the next hit. Unless, of course, they could text you…

Enter Message Mate, by OwnerListens

Message Mate is the newest addition to the  OwnerListens product portfolio, and it is now available to all of our owners. Message Mate is a customizable slider with two lines of text and your virtual phone number. You can add it to your site with one line of code and voila: customers can now text you. And if you have a shop on Magento or Shopify, there will soon be a Message Mate app that you can add to your store with one click.

Customers can text from anywhere and take the conversation with them wherever they go

Message Mate is great for desktop sites, but absolutely perfect for mobile. If you’ve been paying attention to analytics, chances are that the portion of traffic to your site from mobile users has been steadily increasing. By adding Message Mate to your online shop, customers will receive a gentle prompt to contact you, as needed, by sending a text message to your business’s virtual number. Plus, their phone number is kept anonymous.

On the backend, the incoming message is treated just like it would be on other OwnerListens products. You, the owner, and any other users designated by you, will receive a notification of the incoming message via SMS, e-mail and web dashboard, and you can reply from either. That way you can engage customers, and support the sales process conveniently and in real time, anytime, anywhere – never miss a sale.

Message Mate is free for 30 days, as with all OwnerListens products, and doesn’t require a credit card to get started. So what are you waiting for? Get your Message Mate today.