I have been toying with the idea of adding a chat window to my website so that viewers can chat realtime with a sales associate, much like many web-hosting and mortgage broker companies have. 2 questions: 1. Has anyone used a chat script to sucessfully increase conversion rates? 2. Most of the scripts that I have seen have been fairly lackluster.... anyone know of a good php-based chat script (I would love one with a flash front-end), and actually been able to use it with success? fyi - The product I am selling is relatively high-margin (compared to web hosting, for example), but it is a very complex sales cycle.
Sounds like a good idea and I'd say that it is worth a try. I know I appreciate it when a hosting company that has live chat available so that I can ask pre-sales questions.
I've tried using a chat application for a web design business - I found that not many percentage of visitors used it but for those that did, they got the chance to ask lots of questions that hopefully persuaded them to buy!
I have a couple hundred bucks set aside for an Adwords campaign, but since my product is fairly complex, I have fairly poor conversion rates. I am going to test out using a chat window on the Adwords landing page to see if I can improve the conversion rate and get either email addresses or some of these folks on the phone. The product I am going to try out is called ActiveCampaign... it seems to have the best looking interface of the ones I have seen. I will let everyone know how it goes!
Are you prepared to man the chat line. This is a big commitment. "Live Chat Unavailable" can look very unprofessional.
Good point - that is an issue, but there are two of us at our firm and we can switch off. Plus, we can either change the script to make the chat window invisible if we aren't online or only schedule the adwords campaigns for when we are actually sitting at our desks anyway. The chat window will only be on the inbound adwords landing page at first. If it works, I will probably outsource the chat piece if we have the money.
On a similar line, I have bought from companies a couple times because I was able to ask questions and get answers right away. Both times I was reseaching between several companies. those that didn't have chat were weeded out pretty quickly and I ended up choosing between those that did.
I agree with the other posts, on-line chat is great if you are in "Shall I?" mode. Please keep us up-dated, I'm keen to hear your thoughts as I'm also considering adding live help to my site.
I guess if you are looking at long term plan, automation of a chat would be much like a support center. You need to employ someone to manage it while you concentrate on income generation activities.
Affiliateslittleguy- There are two nuggets of value that I am looking for out of the chat window. First, I am using an Adwords to generate targeted traffic. But I do not yet know exactly how targeted the traffic is. I am hoping to get a more qualitative understanding of what the people who click my links are looking for, that way I can adjust my campaigns and keyword targeting. Secondly, the product is a complex product, so I am hoping if I offer to answer questions quickly via chat, I can get them tangled up and get them on the phone. So Ideally, the chat would be a revenue-generating activity. But I agree. Once we can cost-justify it, I will hire someone to man the chat station and pull me on the phone if they have a prospect. Does anyone know the approximate cost of hiring someone with decent english skills to man an online chat window for 10 hrs /day? Bondat - I think a shoutbox may work for some people, but my specific product deals with HR/Legal issues. I just don't know if busy professionals (my target market) would want to air their dirty laundry on a shoutbox. I think that would be a great low-maintenance way to start with some other products though... such as music, or a script, or a bed-and-breakfast.
Its working!!! I think. I installed a chat application (php/mySQL serverside with Ajax front end). The interface is a bit clumsy, but so far, it appears to be working very well. I don't now if a sample size this big is signficant, but on my meager adwords budget on Mon-Wed, I had a Pageviews/Adwords Visitor of 1.17 with nobody contacting us, and almost everyone bouncing out in less than 10 seconds. 23 clicks total. Today, I had 5 clicks with 2.6 pages per visit and most of them spent some significant time on the site. Three of them spent longer on the site than anyone had in the previous 23 adwords visitors before I installed the chat box. Most importantly, one person attempted to chat with me (to bunnybling's point I missed it because I was washing the dishes --- but my script plays a sound and I know when they request a chat so I don't have to stare at the screen all day). AND another out of the five people actually picked up the phone and called us and now we have a significant sales lead. I will keep posting as I get more data... but so far, so good.
I once had a cool program that allowed me to initiate a chat with any visitor in real-time as they visited my site (without them clicking on any button). It seemed cool, but it didn't workout as good as I had hoped. If you run a big site, a "chat now" thing might work, but I suspect that most sites it really wouldn't help much at. Brian
briankoz- I don't think the success of an imbedded chat script has so much to do with the size of the site as if the people actually need to ask questions. In my case, the chat is only visible to people who are landing from Adwords, and the ad is written to entice people who want to chat: "Chat with our experts live now, we can answer your questions fast." People that click that ad would have a higher propensity to chat than a random person on a random site. Sadly though, our conversion rates went back down again today: 5 Adwords visitors, and all bounced out in less than 10 seconds. No chats, no calls.
Late Friday afternoon we got two new leads!!! so I take back what I say about my conversion rate. I will stop posting these day-by-day accounts, but I am pumped up about this new tool..... and I would recommend it to anyone who is hawking a non-commodity product. Sometimes this web stuff gets a little impersonal - sitting behind a computer screen, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the people on the other side are real people with real issues. 99% chance is that they don't care what YOU have to offer, they only care about the problem or question that is on their mind. When you can reach across and help them with that problem, it really gets things going.
I think a chat facility will increase the level of trust with your potential customers. Some of the bigger online firms now do this. Its often a a great source of help. Of cpourse, this has been done by many brokers for quite some time.