Live chat for e-commerce

The shopper stalled at checkout is one question from buying.

E-commerce lives and dies by funnel friction: the shopper who hesitates at shipping costs, the size question nobody was there to answer, the returns-policy doubt at the payment step. MyLiveChat watches the funnel in real time — visitor monitoring shows who is stalling where, proactive invitations open the conversation at the moment of doubt, and an optional AI assistant answers shipping, returns, and product questions around the clock.

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E-commerce

Rescue the stalled checkout

Visitor monitoring shows a shopper parked on the cart or checkout page; a proactive invitation — "Any questions about shipping?" — opens the conversation while the sale is still alive.

E-commerce

Answer the pre-purchase question instantly

Shipping times, returns, sizing, stock: the optional AI assistant answers from your own policies and pages 24/7, and hands off to a human with the transcript when the question is the sale.

E-commerce

Works where your store works

One script tag, with a step-by-step guide for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, OpenCart and everything else. Unlimited chats on every plan, so peak season is not a billing event.

Playbook

The store chat playbook.

The moment What MyLiveChat does
Shopper stalls on the cart page Proactive invitation at the moment of doubt
"How long is shipping to me?" AI answers from your policy pages, 24/7
"Can I return it if it does not fit?" Knowledge base + AI answer before the doubt kills the sale
Order vs product vs shipping question Department routing to the right person
Black-Friday traffic spike Unlimited chats on every plan, including free
Shopper returns two days later Transcript history keeps the conversation

Store-platform install guides

Is this your store?

  • Cart and checkout pages leak buyers who had one unanswered question.
  • Shipping and returns questions repeat enough that AI could absorb most of them.
  • Peak-season chat volume should not change what you pay.

Store chat pays for itself one rescued checkout at a time. MyLiveChat opens the conversation at the moment of doubt, answers the shipping-and-returns long tail with AI trained on your own policies, and installs in minutes on every major store platform — free for one agent, with chats that never meter.

Rollout

What to set up first on a store, and in what order.

Most stores install the widget everywhere on day one and then wonder why the chats are all the same three questions. A better order is to install sitewide, watch a week of real conversations, and only then decide where a proactive invitation earns its place. The pages that usually justify one are the cart, the shipping and returns policy, and whichever product template carries the most traffic; everywhere else, a quiet widget the shopper can open is enough.

  • Week one: install the snippet, answer chats manually, and write down every question verbatim.
  • Week two: turn the five questions you retyped most into canned responses, so the answer is one click and the wording stops drifting between agents.
  • Week three: add a proactive invitation on the cart and the returns policy page only, using a URL match rather than a sitewide rule.
  • Week four: point the AI assistant at your shipping, returns and sizing pages, and read what it answers before you trust it with the overnight shift.

Two guides cover the highest-value moments in more detail: chat at the abandoned cart and order-tracking questions, which between them account for most of what a store queue actually contains.

Pitfalls

Where store chat usually goes wrong.

The most expensive mistake is staffing chat for the hours the office is open rather than the hours the store is busy. Retail traffic peaks in the evening and at the weekend, and a widget that says it is live while nobody is watching converts worse than one that honestly offers an offline form with a reply time you will hit.

The second is answering the same question by hand forever. A question that arrives forty times a week is usually a page problem wearing a chat costume: the delivery estimate is buried, or the returns window is written in a way nobody can parse. Fixing the page removes the chat, permanently. The third is meeting the seasonal peak with no plan, which is what seasonal planning exists to prevent.

For measurement, the number that matters is not chat volume. Compare the order rate of sessions that included a chat against sessions that did not, over the same window and the same traffic source, and track how that gap moves as you change where the invitation fires. Measuring chat conversion sets out the honest version of that calculation, including why the raw comparison flatters chat.

Common questions

Live chat for online stores: common questions.

Does live chat actually help at checkout?
It helps with the hesitation that stops a purchase: a sizing question, whether an item ships to a country, what the returns policy is. Chat answers it in the moment instead of sending the shopper to a contact form. Keep the widget quiet and reassuring at checkout rather than interruptive.
Most of our chats are 'where is my order'. Can we stop answering those by hand?
Largely, yes. Order status is the most repeatable question in retail, so it belongs in the self-service layer: an AI answer trained on your own help content, plus a clear link to order tracking. Every routine question deflected is time your team gets back for the ones that need a person.
What happens during a sale or the holiday peak?
Volume arrives in bursts rather than evenly. Plan coverage around your own busiest hours, lean on canned responses and the AI layer for the repeatable questions, and be honest in the widget when a wait is long instead of leaving shoppers watching silence.
Will it work with our store platform?
The widget installs as a snippet in your store's shared template or theme, which is why it works across common platforms without depending on any one of them. Configuration then happens in the dashboard rather than in your theme code.
Can we see what the shopper is looking at?
Yes. Agents see the current page, referrer and location alongside the conversation, which is usually enough to answer a product question without a long back and forth. For the cases where describing a screen is the bottleneck, an agent can push a page or co-browse.
Is there a free plan we can start on?
Yes. One agent with unlimited chats, free with no time limit and no card required. You upgrade when you need more agents online at once, not when a trial ends.
Free forever for 1 agent

Give every visitor an instant way to reach you.

Launch live chat, connect your knowledge base, and add AI answers when you are ready. No credit card, no trial clock.

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