Everyone needs to integrate chatbots into their marketing strategy! Not only do they target various pain points and create gains, but more than anything, they save money and time. To get your bot to its maximum functionality, you need to start testing.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Testing is an Ongoing Process

With ChatFunnels, you can build your bots without having to know how to code. Pretty cool, right? But, it does require some effort on your part. You need to be smart when building out your bot and test it to see where improvements can be made.

Keep in mind that testing isn’t a one and done. It’s an ongoing process. And it’s critical when dealing with bots. No bot is perfect right of the bat. There is always room for improvement. And we aren’t just talking about little tweaks here and there, but there are major adjustments that can and should be made before and after bot deployment.

In a recent podcast with Billy Bateman, guest Dylan Zwick, from Pulse Labs, discusses the importance of testing. He states, “It’s best to test as early and as often as possible. The earlier you do, the quicker you can catch mistakes, and the earlier you catch mistakes, the easier they are to fix.” He brings up a good point here. You need to be ready to constantly test and revise your chatbots in order to see the best results possible.

Here are 4 simple steps to set you in the right direction for your testing process.

1. Test Before Going Live

The testing process starts way before the bot is live. You should ALWAYS test, even before you deploy the bot.

• It may sound silly, but one thing you could do is have two of your team members read the copy out loud with each other. Remember, the bot needs to have a conversational flow. Sometimes it’s difficult to gauge if the copy sounds casual and informal when you first write it. Reading it out loud can help you see if it actually sounds like a normal conversation. And if it sounds rigid and robotic, change it!
• Another helpful tip is the one-breath test. If you can’t read one of the prompts in one breath, then it’s too long.
• There is also the Jenga technique. Like the game Jenga where you want to take out pieces without having the tower topple over, you want to take out everything unnecessary from your copy.
• To test the flow, you could also try it out with a few different people. Because you as the copy writer/bot builder, may overlook some mistakes in the flow that another pair of eyes could easily point out. Write out the copy and walk through it with someone else to see if they catch anything you might have missed.

2. Evaluate

Assess real conversations that your bot is having with your customers.

You can view the actual interactions that people are having with your bot. Read through them. Determine whether the conversation flow is working. Analyze whether the customers seem to feel comfortable conversing with the bot. It will be fairly easy to see how the conversations are going when you look over them. Based off the customers’ responses, you can tell if they are satisfied with the bot.

3. Revise

Go back and adjust the bot based on what you saw with the conversation flow.

Ask yourself:

• Where are the users abandoning the conversation?
• Are the buttons functioning properly?
• Are the tags working?
• Is the bot adequately answering the question being thrown at it?

This revision step is crucial. Of course, going back and looking at what went wrong and what went right is also vital. But then you need to use that information wisely. Make the necessary changes to improve the bot.

4. Reevaluate

After you’ve gone back through and made changes, then you need to evaluate how those changes have played out. Go back through and see if customers are interacting well with the bot. Check if the changes even made some real improvements.

Then, just test again and again.

Like we’ve mentioned, it’s an ongoing process. You can be constantly working to improve meaningful aspects of the bot. Maybe the first line of the copy needs to be changed to hook more people in from the start. Or perhaps, more button options will be useful. That’s the beauty of testing! It’s impossible to be 100% sure at first what will work best. So test things out to get a feel for what your bot needs.

With Dylan’s company Pulse Labs, they bring in people from a variety of demographics to test their bots. The feedback they are able to collect is not only informative and constructive, but very representative of real customers they would want to target.

Test Then Modify, Modify Then Test

The cycle of testing may seem monotonous, but it truly is beneficial. As the old saying goes: practice makes perfect. The more you test, the better your bot will become. The better your bot, the higher it will convert. The higher the conversion rates, the more money you’re making. I mean, c’mon, it’s simple mathematics!