Where does live chat help an online shop?

The questions shoppers ask before they buy

Most shop chats are not complaints. They are short questions from someone close to buying:

• Sizing and fit. I am usually a 38, does this run small?
• Delivery. When will it arrive, what does it cost, do you ship to my country?
• Returns. Can I send it back, and who pays for that?
• Stock and options. Will this come back in green? Can you engrave it?

These are the same topics that empty carts. In the Baymard Institute's research on US shoppers who left a cart for a reason other than just browsing, 40% named extra costs such as shipping, 20% slow delivery and 13% an unsatisfactory returns policy. A chat cannot change your prices or your courier. It can answer the question before the shopper closes the tab.

Delivery stays a topic after the sale. Among people in the EU who bought online in 2025, Eurostat found that the most common problem was delivery slower than expected, reported by 20%. Another 10% received a wrong or damaged item, and 8% found it hard to find information on guarantees or other legal rights.

Where a chat helps

• On product pages. Sizing and material questions start here. TalkMerlin shows the pages the visitor viewed next to the chat, so "this one" needs no explanation.
• Before checkout. Delivery cost and timing questions come up again and again. Save your answers as canned replies and call them up with /, so every shopper gets the same correct answer.
• After a problem. A customer can send a photo of a damaged item straight in the chat. Images, PDFs and office documents up to 10 MB are accepted.
• Out of hours. Shops sell at night. Outside your opening hours the chat becomes an offline form, and you answer by email in the morning. See what happens when nobody is online.

What to watch out for

• Slow answers. A reply after twenty minutes usually comes too late for a shopper on a product page. Set opening hours you can cover, and let the offline form handle the rest.
• Pop-ups in the wrong place. A chat that opens by itself can help on a product page and get in the way at the payment step. In TalkMerlin the proactive message is off until you set it: one per site, after a number of seconds or on pages whose address contains text you choose, and never over an existing conversation. Try it on your own phone before you leave it on.
• Payment details. Never ask for card numbers or passwords in a chat. Send shoppers back to the checkout instead.
• Answers that contradict your policies. If the chat promises free returns and your returns page does not, you have a dispute. Keep canned replies in line with your delivery and returns pages, and link to them.
• Page speed. Shop pages already carry many scripts, and each one costs load time. TalkMerlin's loader is 1.5 KB gzipped, and the chat window loads only when someone opens it.
• Order questions. Tracking a parcel needs the order. TalkMerlin does not see your shop's orders today. Showing a customer's orders next to the chat is coming for shops on Orbit and is not live yet. Until then, ask for the order number.

Starting small

Start with the questions you already get by email and phone. Write a canned reply for each, set honest opening hours, and add the chat to your shop. Then count chats for a month, and note which questions keep coming back: those belong on your product and delivery pages too.

TalkMerlin's Free plan covers 1 site, 1 agent and 50 conversations a month. Pro is €19 per site per month, with up to 5 agents. See pricing.