If you want to reach out more effectively, live chat is one of the best ways to offer it.
Many brands now offer live chat on their site. And it’s often something that works. As noted by Smart Insights:
Here’s the first thing to know about chat, and online communication in general: direct, real-time human interaction improves brand engagement.
Often, people will visit a brand website with a small query or question. If that question is answered in a quick, simple and understandable way, a site visitor is much more likely to have confidence in that brand. But if their confusion can’t be cleared up, they’re likely to simply click away.
Chat usage also lifts conversions and revenues:
I’ve found that visitors who chatted converted at roughly 12 – 15%, while visitors didn’t chat converted in the 1.5 – 2.0% range. That’s roughly an 8X increase
An 8X increase is huge. And you can gain from that potential increase – and all of the benefits that come with it – simply by having a chat facility on your brand site.
Where should I place this chat link?
You should place this where it’s most likely to be noticed. If it’s more likely to be noticed, it’s more likely to be used.
Some research shows that this location is the top-right of a page. It’s a good idea to place it there alongside an icon. Humans notice icons more readily than text, so an icon – along with a top-right placement – will make your chat function very easy to find.
You can even put it in more than one place… or have it move around the page as the site scrolls.
What should the chat link look like?
You want to make it clear that you have a real person waiting to speak to your customers. To drive this point home, you should have a small picture of a person beside the chat link. You could even use a group photo.
When and how to offer chat
Think of the places where your visitors are most likely to have questions, and push chat invitations there under certain conditions (for example, after a returning visitor has been inactive on the page for 30 seconds or longer).
You should also offer an easy escape from this chat offer – customers don’t want to struggle working out how to click away from an unwanted dialogue box.
Choose the right staff
When selecting which of your staff to take this role on, you need to be selective. A sales-y person isn’t necessarily the best call here. Hiring from within the company is likely the best option, but you can outsource if you think that will work better for your business.
You should choose people who are outgoing and proactive – and who have a typing speed of at least 40wpm.
And you should ensure you don’t, under any circumstances, use chatbots – even the best of them!
Online chat usage, in this author’s experience, is a proven visitor engagement, conversion rate and revenue booster.
And which business doesn’t want that? If you want to reach out more effectively, live chat is one of the best ways to offer it.