Designing Chatbar: Human Expertise at Scale

A Product That Worked, But Wasn't Ready

When I joined ChatID in 2013 as the 8th employee and first in-house designer, we had a proof of concept that worked well enough to secure investor backing — but it was ages away from being a product with shoppers in mind.

Retailer sites relied on static FAQs and product specifications that were slow to update and ill-equipped to answer what shoppers actually needed. People had questions at the moment of decision and there was no one there to answer them.

Our original technical demo had validated the idea. What we needed now was to turn it into something real.

Building a Research Practice from Scratch

In the early days we had no users, so I started with internal interviews to get educated. Over time those evolved into a structured workflow: recruiting participants from Craigslist to understand how people shopped and how chat could play a role in their behavior.

One theme surfaced over and over.

"People are used to having a store associate and asking questions directly."

That insight shaped everything. A brand rep stationed at a store to promote a new product — that was the mental model our product had to match. We didn't need to reinvent anything. We needed to move that experience online.

From that research, we agreed on three core design principles:

• Respect the retailer's environment — we're guests, not owners
• Surface naturally at moments of need, not constantly
• Every interaction should justify our presence with value

Shipping, Learning, and Scaling

Newegg: First Real Deployment

Our original technical demo soon became Chatbar, and with our first deployment at Newegg we began to understand what shoppers actually needed in real time. We could now see behavioral data — and it validated what our research had pointed toward.

Mobile, Accessibility, and Scale

Shoppers who engaged with brand experts were 3x more likely to complete a purchase. That data gave us the confidence to invest in the next big iteration: bringing Chatbar to mobile web.

After many iterations and what felt like all the usability sessions we could run, Chatbar Mobile became an interactive layer on top of the shopping window — giving users the same experience as desktop, adapted to how they actually browse on their phones.

A partnership with Target brought our biggest product challenge yet: WCAG AA compliance. What started as a retailer requirement became our main focus as a product and design organization. Screen reader compatibility, keyboard controls. These were no longer just details, they were core to the experience.

Our approach to testing led us to partner with the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, where we were able to test with users who are often forgotten, and build something that genuinely worked for them.

Results

Shoppers who engaged with Chatbar showed dramatically different purchasing behavior:

• 3x higher conversion rate when brand experts were available
• 34% reduction in cart abandonment when chat was present
• 20% fewer returns due to better-informed purchases

Chatbar deployed across Walmart, Target, Newegg, and Office Depot, connecting 50+ brands with millions of shoppers. By the end of 2018, ChatID was acquired by Salsify — and Chatbar's adoption across leading retailers played a key role in accelerating Salsify's Enhanced Content expansion after the acquisition.

ChatID is where I fell in love with startups and learned to build for the people on the other end of the screen — something that carried directly into my work at Balto.