Depending on your type of local business and the resources you have in place, providing ‘Live Chat’ on your website may not necessarily be suitable. But if it’s something that you can accommodate into your business strategy, then you should find this information valuable.

If you spend money on advertising campaigns to drive visitors to your website, I recently wrote a relevant article about live chat benefits and why it’s useful for local businesses. But here are some key tips…

How To Effectively Provide ‘Live Chat’ on Your Website

Be Quick in Your Responses

The fact is people like ‘Live Chat’ as it offers a convenient and instant way to get in touch live with a real person for FREE!. You must have the right chat Agents and infrastructure in place in order to provide quick immediate responses. And keep your replies as brief as possible (without fluff) for quick time-effective interactions with people.

Have Capable Agents in Place

A key part of ‘Live Chat’s ability to increase website conversion rate is to have people in place who are knowledgeable about your product or service. Besides, you need fluent communicators who can solve customer queries effectively. So make sure your Agents are well trained. If you are outsourcing chat Agents, then provide them with knowledge base and FAQ content for dealing with common questions.

Doing ‘Live Chat’ In-House

Using existing employees as chat Agents is of course a way of doing ‘Live Chat’ in-house. The good thing is you or your existing staff members are already knowledgeable about your offers. Therefore if you already have resources in place internally to provide the service yourself, why not take advantage? After all, the end result is you will be regularly getting more customers.

Your staff can operate your chat service on a rotational basis. For example, have someone operate your chat system for 2 hours at a time. Alternatively, have someone doing the job full-time. Just make sure that whoever is the chat Agent on duty is fully dedicated without getting distracted with other tasks. As lack of responses or quick replies to ‘Live Chat’ enquiries will obviously have a negative impact on your business.

Hiring Outsourcers For The Task

You may simply outsource your ‘Live Chat’ service. This is a great option if you don’t already have employees available to use as Agents or you are too busy to do it yourself in-house. It’s very affordable. But more importantly, the ongoing sales revenue you will gain is far greater than the low cost of outsourcing. Imagine highly multiplying your sales.

Besides, a hired chat Agent will be focused on this one task. They won’t get distracted with other tasks that employees may possibly experience. If you choose to go down this route, remember to provide your outsourced Agents with knowledge base and FAQ for solving common customer questions. Sometimes an outsourced Agent cannot answer a question during a ‘Live Chat’. What happens then? No problem. They take a message on your behalf and forward it to you for a reply.

Include Screen Notification Feature

Your website chat system should include notification feature. This will automatically notify you on your computer screen when receiving new ‘Live Chat’ enquiries. You can therefore avoid missing out on customers.

Maximise The ‘Live Chat’ Experience

Focusing on conversion is always important. The point is: you need to test, test and keep testing your chat service! It could be about level of response rate, quantity of leads captured daily, levels of sales per day and so forth. Find out what’s working or not for ongoing improvements. Look for emerging patterns such as what common questions keep coming up. Then based on your findings, make necessary ongoing improvements.

Be Aware of Peak Traffic Times

Not many businesses will be able to employ or provide 24-hour a day, seven days a week ‘Live Chat’ support. Therefore you need to be aware of when traffic peaks on your website in order to effectively allocate your resources. Knowing this will allow you to have someone dedicated in place during peak times.

Offer Warm & Friendly Chats

Your chat service should be a warm, friendly and great way to help you connect with your customers. So, use the opportunity of being in this situation to not only build excellent rapport with people, but go the extra mile to meet their needs. As a result, satisfied customers will come back to you for repeat business or give you referrals.

Provide ‘Offline Mode’ Contact Form

When you are unavailable for ‘Live Chat’ support, turn your chat box into offline mode. Make sure your chat box has a contact form. People are then allowed to leave messages with their contact details (name, email etc). So you are still able to capture leads (from your website) when your ‘Live Chat’ service is offline.

Optimise ‘Live Chat’ For Mobile

These days with many people visiting websites on their mobile phones, your chat system must be accessible on mobile devices. If not, you’ll miss out on a lot of chat enquiries from smartphone users. Besides, if you are outgoing and would like to respond to ‘Live Chat’ enquiries (while on the go), ensure you can do this via your smartphone. As this provides the flexibility to be away from your desktop computer and still access your chat system. The point is you and your website visitors should have access to your ‘Live Chat’ via mobile devices.

Conclusion…

I hope you find this valuable to effectively set up ‘Live Chat’ support on your website. You can also access live chat benefits through this link and learn why it’s a useful system, particularly if you are spending money on advertising to generate customers. Best wishes!

The post How to Provide ‘Live Chat’ Effectively on Your Website appeared first on Market Business Online.

‘Live Chat’ provides a convenient, quick and easy way to engage as well as build relationships (in real-time) with your website visitors. It allows one on one interaction on a personal level that turns hot prospects into buyers.

Key goals of any business with a website is simple – effectively capture leads, offer solutions to customer needs, increase sales and maximise revenue without raising their marketing budget. Forward thinking businesses are now providing interactive ‘Live Chat’ service on their websites to meet all of these needs all together. This is certainly a very useful tool to implement, especially if you are spending money on advertising.

‘Live Chat’ Interaction is Proven for Boosting Website Conversions!

A survey carried out by Forrester Research entitled ‘Making Proactive Chat Work’ gives important insights into how people react to getting ‘Live Chat’ support on a website. The survey report states that 44% of online consumers say that having their questions answered by a live person whilst considering a purchase online is one of the most vital features a website can provide.

Forester Research also states that 62% reported as highly likely to buy again via the same website. A further 38% of respondents claimed they made a buying decision as a result of a ‘Live Chat’ session. And if a chat system and complementary website are mobile optimised for mobile users, the better the conversion rates.

In fact ‘Live Chat’ has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel with 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone (Source: eDigital Research).

‘Live Chat’ is Convenient – Customers Love it (e-Digital Research)…

7 Key Benefits of ‘Live Chat’ Support on Your Website

1. Converts Web Traffic into Leads & Customers

You may already be getting traffic to your website or a landing page via your advertising. But not every visitor likes to phone or email you to make an enquiry. Not everyone wants to pay for a phone call or wait for an email reply. That does not mean those site visitors should be ignored and you lose them to your competitors as a result. The good news is ‘Live Chat’ is proven to instantly capture hot leads you would otherwise lose and convert them into customers.

2. ‘Live Chat’ Support Increases Sales

Sometimes a website visitor is confused or has a burning question that stops them from making a buying decision. And they need immediate real-time response from a live person. But instead of paying for a phone call or sending an email support ticket, they will simply leave the site and go to a competitor. ‘Live Chat’ provides an immediate interactive way of answering any questions, overcoming objections and guiding site visitors along a sales process in real-time. So, you get more out of your advertising spend.

3. Builds Credibility with Customers

When visitors land on your website and realise that you have a ‘Live Chat’ support system in place, it gives them a good impression about your overall customer service. This makes a credibility building statement that your business is actively well run along with going the extra mile to support your customers. As a result, more of your site visitors will sign up or buy from you with confidence.

4. ‘Live Chat’ Support Boosts Website ROI

If you are already paying for traffic (visitors) to your website, then maximising your ROI (Return on Investment) should be a top priority. You need a great way to engage the traffic coming to your website, which then converts into more sales. Otherwise you will be wasting a lot of your marketing spend. Live Chat effectively provides engagement with your site visitors in real-time. Therefore it helps to boost your ROI.

5. Makes You Stand Out From Competitors

Using ‘Live Chat’ on your website will give you an edge over your competitors. You will simply stand out by offering something valuable to your customers that your competitors are not. Doing something different or going the extra mile in business will go a long way towards making a big impression in front of your customers.

6. Valuable Real-Time Customers Feedback

With regards to customer interaction, very few communication methods give the level of insight you can acquire from a ‘Live Chat’ support service. The main valuable thing about ‘Live Chat’ is the open conversational aspect of it, rather than just purely corresponding (like email). ‘Live Chat’ provides a 2-way interaction that enables chat Agents to better gather customers feedback, identify their pain points, meet their needs, track data and also discover required website improvements all in real-time.

7. Reduces The Cost Of Paid Traffic

On average, 41 – 55% of website visitors leave right away. That’s about half of your website visitors leaving as soon as they arrive. This is what’s known as bounce rate. Around 26 – 40% is considered a good bounce rate, the lower the better. And if you are running Pay Per Click advertising campaign (like Google Adwords), the lower your website (landing page) bounce rate, the less you pay for each click. You even pay less for each click than your competition…

Google have a quality score system for rewarding sites with good conversion rates by reducing their cost per click. Key way to actually reduce bounce rate is to ‘engage’ your traffic (i.e. your site visitors). ‘Live Chat’ support is a proven way to achieve this. Therefore from the traffic you are already paying for, not only would you be able to maximise sales, but also massively reduce your costs.

Conclusion…

You can now see why interactive ‘Live Chat’ support on your website is worth considering if you spend money on advertising to generate customers. As you can highly reduce advertising spend and maximise sales through your website. If you set up a chat system, make sure your site is mobile optimised for the ‘Live Chat’ mobile users, which further helps to increase conversions.

The post Why Website Live Chat is Useful for Your Advertising Campaigns! appeared first on Market Business Online.