Using live chat on your website to answer questions is something you should think about once your website starts getting some traffic. If you are getting organic traffic from search engines, or traffic from paid ad campaigns (on Facebook or Google among others), using live chat can easily help you increase conversions.
Think of it this way. In physical stores, people can get into the store, look around and maybe decide to buy something or not. But when they visit the store and you (or a sales person working in your store) interact with them, the prospect is more likely to buy compared to one that comes in and no one talks to them.
People coming in your shop, can just look at the products on display and think whatever they want about the said products. But once you as a store owner engages them in conversation:
-you are more likely to understand their needs and guide them towards making the best choices / decision based on their needs.
-they are more likely to clear out of their heads any lingering doubts they have about going through with a purchase, once they ask questions they might have. The answers you give them, as long as they are truthful and well-intentioned, can help a prospect move forward in the purchase process with confidence.
-you are more likely to get information that can help you serve customers well as a store owner. So, even if a person doesn’t buy right when they visit you for the first time, just chatting with them can help you understand them and their needs better. This in turn can help you position yourself as one of the best providers (if not the best provider) for the kind of product / service if you are offering. The insights you get chatting casually with prospects and customers can help you make things smoother for you, them and your staff.
-you can get their information. Once you have a person’s information on file, it is much easier to get back to them, to warm them up, to give more reasons to finally take the decision to come and buy from you.
What is all these things got to do with websites?
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If you run your own website, with an online shop component for example, you can do most of the things I have mentioned above in real-time with people visiting your site.
You can strike conversations with them. You can assure them that someone is there for them, if at all they have any questions. You can quickly go back and forth in a manner that closely resembles two people chatting.
And one of the great things about having a live chat tool on your website is that the conversation between both parties is almost instantaneous. There are no delays like those associated with email. Ad there are no phone numbers to remember and punch in the Phone app before you can get a hold of someone and ask whatever question you might have.
Some things you can do with a live chat software installed on your website
-You can see where people land on your site. This can help you anticipate questions you might get asked. You can have the answers to these questions on your fingertips. Pushing them out to them as fast as you can – keeping their interest while helping them become even more confident in the decision they are about to make.
All the recurring questions can also be turned into blog posts published on your site. The idea behind this is so that you can give short answers to questions you get. For detailed answers, you can point prospects / clients / customers to links / to blog post with detailed pricing information or posts with detailed feature list.
-You can choose which pages, posts and products to show your chat windows. And you can have different chat windows on different pages – depending on the intent of people visiting that particular page.
-You can initiate a chat with visitors or you can let the visitors themselves initiate the chat.
Other things you can do include:
- seeing the sites someone was visiting before coming to your site
- seeing how long they stay on your website / a particular site on your website
- seeing their operating system / web browser
- seeing the country they are visiting your site from
- seeing if they have been on your site before / seeing any previous chats you have had with them
In other words, when you look at all these things, it just goes to show how, in most cases, investing on a live chat tool for your site – and investing in someone to man it – can yield great dividends / conversions for your business.
How do you get started with live chat tools on your website
Pick any of the popular live chat tools out there and follow their instructions on how to install their software / app on your site. Most of the providers will always share how to install their tools on sites using WordPress / WooCommerce / Shopify / Prestashop / Magento / Zencart among other CMS / online shopping cart software.
Some of the popular live chat software to choose from include:
-Tawk.to – free, popular and trusted by millions of blogs, websites and businesses around the world
-LiveChat (formerly known as LiveChat Inc)
-Zendesk Chat
-Intercom