Hello again everyone,
We are glad that you stopped by to check out our thoughts about adding CHAT to your website. As always, a quick disclaimer. We do not claim to be the official word on this topic. We just wanted to share our knowledge and hope that our 20+ combined experiences in the industry will account for something. Great, now that’s out of the way, let’s get to it.
If you are like most website owners or developers, you understand that chat on websites have been around for sometime. The problem that existed then was that they were very difficult to install and manage. Thanks to the progression of technology, a lot has changed in the land of website chat programs. Running a business is hard enough, but managing your online traffic and turning it into a lead can be sometimes unbearable. Usually you have to rely on your design and hope they client that “contact us” button. You stare at your Google Analytics in REAL-TIME mode cheering on the visitors, chanting “CLICK THE BUTTON, CLICK THE BUTTON”. Well those days have passed. Chat services have become a large driver in revenue for companies large and small. The revolutions in CHAT have helped bridge those gaps between the big and small businesses. If you had chat in the past, most people equated that to “Well Established” businesses due to the costs that usually came with the feature. Now you can have all the same features as the big guys for such a small price. We are talking as low as $14 a month. That’s an awesome deal. You can have the ability to monitor your traffic in real-time as the navigate your pages. You can reach out to them at any point of time to initiate dialog. This is huge and allows you to virtually great all your visitors personally. Showing your clients your attentiveness helps alleviate insecurities and doubts with just a simple “Hello, how may we help you?”.
Now of course, it’s not just rainbows and sunshine with chat programs. With this new feature, you will have to have someone always available. If clients visit your site during normal business hours and does not see anyone available could cost you business. Training is the next big thing. Instead of receiving an email and responding to it when convenient is no longer an option. You will have to make sure the chat agent is knowledgable enough to instill confidence in potential clients. At the same time, the agent must know when to take the clients information and get back to them. DO NOT take the chat portion of your site lightly. If leveraged correctly, it can be a huge driver of revenue for your business.
Here are some bulleted PROS and CONS.
PROS:
- Interactively Monitor Online Traffic
- Affordable for small and large businesses
- Easy to install and setup.
- Revenue Driver
- Provides unique methods of engaging your online audience
- Mobile device integration (Depends on the Platform)
CONS
- Will require constant supervision by an agent
- Training expenses and possibly increased staffing costs
- Limited customizations. (Depends on the Platform)
As you can see, the “PROS” considerably out weigh the “CONS” in our opinion. Unless you have a huge amount of traffic, the overhead to run chat should not be catastrophic to your business model. What we recommend is visiting OLARK or ZOPIM and giving one of their trial accounts a spin. You can easy vet the process and see if it mades sense for you. But be careful, because you know what they say, “Once you go CHAT, you will never want to go back!”. We hope this helped you on your quest for CHAT on your website. Thanks for for visiting and feel free to contact us via our chat if you have any questions.
– SMS LLC Integration Team
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