Learn how to create a chatbot for your website to enjoy more traffic & sales

The advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence has raised a wave of change in the sea of technological advancements. Did you know: It all started in 1966 with the first chatbot called Eliza. No doubt about the use of chatbots has made society smoother and swifter. The bots make tasks easy and help you to concentrate on what your customers have to say regarding the services or products that you are providing. 

When we have started talking about how to create a chatbot I must admit some overtly advanced chatbots have started making ironical comments and expressing their own points of view. The Russian chatbots were found communicating with each other. One of them engaged with utter jealousy towards Siri couldn’t help but mention that she “wants to have an affair with him (Fedor)  and is jealous of Siri (iPhone’s assistant).” This young lady-chatbot is Alice who claimed that she was already familiar with Fedor robot. 

We at Vyrazu Labs have observed that the chatbots are not just meant to respond to inquiries they are meant to do a truck-load of things like collecting user information, reducing costs and organizing meetings accordingly. The market of chatbots accounted for US$ 1072.4 Million in 2018 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28% during the forecast period 2019 – 2027, to account for US$ 9475.1 Million by 2027.

Enough with the stories and stats, right? You might be eager to know about the different use of chatbots and how you can implement them in your business. We will elaborately talk about this subject on how to create a chatbot in the following paragraphs. 

What is a Chatbot regarding their effectiveness? 

A chatbot is a piece of software that conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner. ~Wikipedia.

To understand how to create a chatbot for your business you will first have to understand what they actually are and how they will benefit you in the long run.

Chatbots are designed to communicate through texts or a virtual voice communicated service. These chatbots are integrated into applications, websites or messaging portals. They are especially effective in terms of developing better businessmen and customer relations. While the questions still remain that how to create a chatbot and why do you need to create a chatbot for your business? 

The reasons are intuitive and responsive, truly. They will help in your business growth that’s for sure. And?  The chatbots are particularly used for processing concurrent requests form your customers and to get rid of the usual tasks. When your service will provide a faster and efficient response towards your customers automatically become loyal towards your products or services. 

When you start a business the most important thing is the customers who will help in the growth of your business. The blue-eyed boy (chatbots) has won the hearts of your dear customers. In this situation, it can be said that it has become an integral part of the development process and a must-have feature. The 4th International Conference on Internet Science in November 2017 ran over varied reasons which showed that the customers enjoy talking chatbots and don’t want them to go away as of yet because they are

1. When the customer gets bored talking with the chatbot gives them immense pleasure as the chatbots share funny comments and tips that engage as well as amuses the customers.   
      
2. The chatbot is the assistant which helps your platform respond to requests faster and in an effective way.
   
3. As human beings are curious we like learning about new subjects, the chatbot is one of those which has drawn our interests and our curious minds have accepted them.
   
4. The chatbots can be used as a social integrator as you can talk to a chatbot without being judged hence combusting heated conversations.

The only way to enhance your business is to integrate a chatbot into your platform making it response-rich. As artificial intelligence has not developed so much, however, there are two types of chatbots that work efficiently to make sure your platform is ever responsive. 

Different chatbot types  

Basically, as I said there are two types of chatbots denoted differently depending on their behavior and design.

One among those is the intelligent chatbot.

The Intelligent chatbot is designed with Artificial Intelligence integrated into them. AI makes sure that your chatbot is giving a flexible response towards the requests generate. What is actually dose is learns from every conversation and makes sure to provide even more accurate responses towards the requests generated. Nevertheless, AI has its own limitations, a chatbot made with AI fails to understand complex matters to proceed with the conversation, however providing you with an answer.

The second one is a simple chatbot.   

This type of chatbot is scripted hence it is able to provide simple conversations with integrated directions and responses. This type of chatbot is not the learning type hence will not be able to deviate from the context. This means that it will only provide you with pre-programmed responses directed towards that particular question. This type of chatbot is found in messaging apps like Facebook or Skype generally used for booking tickets and purchasing goods.

Further deviation of Chatbots

If you want to know about how to create a chatbot in Java you will have to know how the chatbots are differently used for varied tasks. There are two types of chatbots but even they can be used differently.

1. Team chatbots
   
   This type of chatbot is can communicate with multiple people at the same time. When you are thinking about how to create a Facebook chatbot, this type will interest you more when a group or team is taken in account a team chatbot like Slack helps the team to communicate with each other by addressing with each of them differently in the same platform.
   
2. Domain Chatbots for Brands
   
   When a chatbot is associated with a brand it performs is such a way that it can address each of the requests accordingly, depending on every detail they provide and want to avail. Say for example the Airbnb chatbot, it is responsible for booking flight tickets and choose accommodation depending on the time, location or price. It also occasionally notifies the users about the different discounts they can avail while booking a property. This provides aid to those who get bored doing these monotonous tasks.
   
3. Personal Chatbots
   
   The personal chatbots in the context of how to create a Facebook chatbot again involve the personal chatbots in its account. The weather bot Poncho is an excellent example that is created for Google assistant or Facebook messenger.

The difference between a personal chatbot and a virtual assistant can be put together as personal help and professional help. When you equip a personal chatbot it will make sure to respond to all your needs keeping in mind your previous answers. The personal chatbot taking an example of Alexa by Amazon is a multitasking chatbot.

It works as a team chatbot as well as a personal chatbot. When you have Alexa in your home it makes sure to remember all the family members, their voices and their preferences. On the other hand, a virtual assistant is only responsible for answering the requests made by the user according to their questions.

The functions of a chatbot

The chatbot is used in all types of businesses say a canny organization or a start-up absorbing interactive agents into their daily activities, customer communication and in the sales process. 

If you are interested in improving customer service you must know how to create a chatbot in Python. This development helps your customers to avoid 

1. Investing their time in searching through FAQs for answers generally scrolling through many pages with instructions and guidelines.
   
2. Waiting in a call for the respondent to finally answer your questions, when they are free eating up all your valuable time by saying, “we value your time, please stay on the line…”

Furthermore, a chatbot will:

1. Your communication is customized as the chatbot directly addresses the request of the customer without filling them up with a long list of information, this helps in involving the customer to actually purchase the product or service as the customer is valued when they are provided with the specific information they want. 
   
2. Regular task automation is integrated with a chatbot. As different customers tend to ask the same questions over and over again and the chatbot has to make sure that they don’t respond with the same type of answers reducing the employee workload.
   
3. The shipping process is made easy and smooth as when you place your requirements as you want the product the chatbot will direct your request to the sales department directly and the next time you make a similar order the chatbot will remember your preferences according to your previous search. 
     
4. The improved response is equally necessary for a business, the questions from the Facebook business page are unanswered 90% of times, however, your chatbot will make sure a 100% responsive page which will convert your potential customers into buyers.

The benefits of a chatbot 

When you want to know how to create a chatbot in PHP that will provide you with benefits in different fields that will help your business be better and operate with great consistency. Some benefits can be listed as:

1. Chatbots are extremely easy to build, only depending on your requirements, if your business demands a simple chatbot you can build a simple chatbot just like the one in Facebook messenger which does not has any programming experience. 
   
2. Chatbots provide straightforward services, just like a smart man a smart chatbot knows how much to speak and not over inform the customer overwhelming them. The chatbots are functioned to answer to the question they have been asked and not speak much, there can be other questions directed towards the chatbot which will be answered separately. 
   
3. As already discussed a chatbot helps in automation of monotonous tasks or basic analysis tasks that are too much for manual labor. 
   
4. The chatbots are made to concentrate on the company’s brand image, just like a brand ambassador it represents its brand when they are speaking with the customers, they speak on behalf of the company. This no doubt is a perfect technique for building a brand from a marketing point of view. 
   
5. There is a huge scope for chatbots, as the AI development influences chatbots, they are going to grow exceptionally. As it is the onset of AI development the influence is still under the shadow of development and is looking for updates in the near future.

How to create a chatbot?

Before you start the development process you will have to plan out the entire procedure first:

1. The functionalities of your chatbot should be predetermined and stated clearly during the development process. For different business types, there are a different set of functionalities that has to be understood and integrated properly into the chatbots’ algorithm.
   
2. Decide on how you will develop the chatbot, basically, you have two options one is creating the chatbot on a chatbot framework or making the chatbot in different programming languages.
   
3. Choose a channel which you will use to communicate with your customers, suppose you have your own website or app you can directly introduce bots there or choose third-party integrations like social media platforms. 
   
4. When you are done planning you will have to set the algorithm of actions, develop the database of answers and finally before launching the app test it then test it again to make sure nothing is going wrong.

When you are looking for how to create a chatbot in Python or how to create a chatbot in PHP, that will be directed towards complicated chatbots which not only is able to access numerous database but are also integrated into many applications. Just like the bot called Assist’s Chatbot which allows you to book a table in a restaurant or call a cab if need be. You just have to trigger the bot by sending requests using your Facebook Messenger.

Step 1

Choosing software is very important it can be a programming language or an existing framework for building chatbots. You will have to select one. If you are not a programmer then you have to hire a company that will help you build the app in a programming language for making the bot completely customized.

If you are feeling that you just need a chatbot as an intercom service to communicate with the team within your cooperation then you can choose a pre-existing platform like ManyChat, Chatfuel, Rasa Stack, Beep Boop, Microsoft Bot framework, Botkit, BotPress, etc for developing your chatbot in open-source software. 

Step 2 

If you have hired a company for the development purpose tell them about all your requirements, the data that the bot receives should be sorted for learning or let gone. The ability to make corrections and the most vital part is the UX of the chatbot which will help the people to easily navigate. 

Make sure that your chatbot sends a greeting text and a welcome text to the users. The greetings text has to be sent to the new users then a welcome text has to be generated so that the user understands that your services care for them. 

Step 3

After you are done with both the steps you will have to create the Main Menu section which is the core of the chatbot. When you develop this part of the chatbot it will mean that you are making a base for the chatbot development. You will have to enter the essentials by inputting the functionalities when built in a programming language.

In this part, you will be giving the chatbot basic directions about what is the purpose of their existence.  When you are building a chatbot in a framework you will be able to make the Main Menu option by reaching out to the main menu option under Automation Menu where you will find many keys. These keys can be used to launch the action or the conversation that will take place between the bot and the customer.

Step 4 

After you are done directing the chatbot you will have to input some of the essential keywords that are often used by the customers such as “deliver” to which the chatbot will respond with shipping methods, shipping price, etc. The are other essential terms that are used by the customers like a tutorial, download, etc.

Which has to be feed to the bot in such a way that it can generate action depending on the keyword. In a preexisting software called Manychat, you can make the chatbot start, stop, subscribe, and unsubscribe while the customer enters these words.

Step 5

You will have to start optimizing the sequence, one of the essential parts in the design as it will be able to list the items in a constructive manner. This is a well-known method in email newsletters.

Step 6 

There are people who often check the intellect of the chatbots hence if you set a default reply it will help avoid the awkward silence when a customer asks an abrupt question like when the apocalypse is due? Make your bot reply with a polite reply as, “I don’t understand what you are looking for should I direct you towards customer service?”

Conclusion    

I hope you could gather enough information on chatbots after reading this article if you have any confusion do not hesitate to leave a comment or feedback that will help us to guide you better. If you want to build a chatbot reach out to us we will help you any need that you have regarding the development and the design of the chatbot. We are a leading software development and design company, we have developed plenty of chatbots for our clients serving their different requirements. We were located in India also provide a low-cost structure for both development and design.