This ecommerce startup can up conversion rates for merchants

Omnichat is a messaging platform and can also monitor ecommerce movements.

Every ecommerce business’ nightmare is low conversion rates, or the percentage of web visitors who were able to get what they came for out of the total number of visitors. This can come on the back of lack of communication efficiency, leading to missed orders and to an inability to identify which products web visitors viewed or even liked. Solving this pain point, Hong Kong-based startup Omnichat has created an omni-channel messaging platform that claims to achieve higher conversion rates, sales and customer service efficiency.

“I started the business because I faced the same pain point before when I was running my own ecommerce business in 2012,” Alan Chan, founder and CEO of Omnichat told Retail Asia. “I missed a lot of orders due to lack of efficiency to communicate with people when they visited my ecommerce website. That’s how I realised the importance of real-time messaging communication and understanding of ecommerce users behaviours.”

Omnichat aims to help ecommerce merchants connect all their users’ messenger channels, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Line and WeChat, and map all their purchasing behaviours through a single platform. Merchants will be able to chat with their customers and provide marketing automation to them as well, turning website visitors into purchasers.

Apart from this, the platform can identify and share merchant insights, such as which are the most viewed and purchased products. It can also tell which messenger channels are the best way to convert users from a website visitor to a real purchaser.

The service-as-a-service (SaaS) startup then charges merchants on a monthly or yearly subscription based on the number of users they acquired through the different massaging channels.

In March, Omnichat secured US$800,000 in a seed funding led by Taiwan-based venture capital firm AppWorks, which was also participated by other investors including the Hong-Kong based Aria Group. “The most challenging thing we faced during the funding round is how we keep a high growth rate on both product and business,” Chan shared. He added that they had to make sure that they maintained a high revenue growth, low churn rate and high user retention rate to prove the value of their product and business.

They aim to spend 50% of their funding in further perfecting the product, whilst the other half will go to business development and marketing initiatives.

“I believe the most important way to win the competition is how we provide the better understanding of customer’s behaviours during their ecommerce user journey. We already understand the customer's favourite product views and purchases and connect all their messenger channels, thus triggering the personalised message to the best channels at the right time, bringing high conversion rate to the customers,” Chan added.