Increase Sales With Live Chat Software

Many large websites increase sales by providing a live chat feature right on their website.

This can also be effective for small companies – and a variety of providers make easy live chat software for this very purpose.

What Is Live Chat?

Live chat software allows people visiting your website to have a conversation with representatives in your office, much like an instant messaging conversation.

Here’s an example (image from BoldChat):

Your website visitor would see this window. On the business side of the chat, there is a more detailed screen, allowing you to have multiple conversations and see details about the visitor.

Why Use Live Chat?

There are many reasons that people visit your website, but then leave without becoming a lead. Live chat software helps eliminate some of these reasons, helping visitors get immediate answers for their questions without having to pickup the phone. For many small companies, this can be a unique differentiator, helping your website standout from others in the market.

Operational Issues

Before diving in with live chat, you want to think about how it’s going to be handled in the office. Visitors who click “chat now” are not going to want to wait around for someone to notice that they’re waiting. The software can usually be set to show a contact form if no operators are available, but this gives up live chat’s main advantage.

You’ll want to decide who is going to be responsible for responding to chat requests. Most likely this will be whoever is the first telephone responder – and just like the phone, an alternate or two will help ensure a timely response (although chat is easier than the telephone, as one person can handle multiple conversations at once).

Setting Up Live Chat Software

I recommend small companies go with a web-based live chat service. This makes the install as painless as possible, and the services are reasonably priced, starting at $20-30/month for basic products from leading providers. You sign up for the service, and insert a small piece of code on your website. This may require technical help. (For those of you using WordPress, it just needs to be placed into the footer, which can be accomplished with several plugins – including this one.)

There are probably hundreds of live chat providers out there. A couple that are reliable and have reasonably priced services include Help On Click and BoldChat.

Have you tried live chat software? How did it work? Leave your comments below.

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