Ecommerce businesses now have a dizzying array of tools to choose from to enable their customers to connect with them to deal with queries that arise pre and post purchase. These tools range from product pages and FAQs all the way from independent experts and live agents to automated chatbots. So, with so much help on offer, why are retailers still losing high-intent customers at the point of purchase?

Exclusive new research commissioned by iAdvize shows that consumers lack confidence when they're confronted with a complex range of products and specs to choose from. Despite advances in technology, shoppers still feel they lack support from brands/retailers during their purchasing journey. What support they do receive often feels disjointed or incomplete and there is a lack of confidence in it which leads to delay or abandonment.

And because of a lack of integration between the various tools, retailers cannot easily and cost-effectively gather and use data to achieve a comprehensive understanding of what their customers really want or, perhaps even more importantly, why sales were either lost or won.

Our research shows that now, more than ever, retailers and brands need to reach out to online shoppers to save the sale. Consumers still crave human interaction and their preferred solution is to blend the speed and efficiency of automation with the reassurance of human knowledge, experience and skill.

The best way to achieve this is with a fully-unified ecosystem of engagement tools that seamlessly integrate and amplify data pre and post-sale.

This includes providing the opportunity for fast, light-touch support to speedily validate a specific point in that process as well as in-depth product analysis from an independent product expert for complex, high-value purchases.