If you already have traffic to your ecommerce store (or service business) there is one fast and easy step you can take that can instantly increase sales: Provide instant answers via live chat as many hours as you possibly can. If you don’t have live chat on your site, read on for how you can get hosted live chat absolutely free.
Why should Live Chat make such a large difference? Because shoppers don’t buy until they have confidence that they have the answers they need to make a decision. The faster and more efficiently you answer their questions the sooner they’ll buy. Live Chat closes more sales even on well-designed sites with excellent product descriptions. Be sure to optimize your chat to make it warm and friendly.
Are You Getting the Most out of your existing Live Chat service? Would you like to add excellent hosted Free Chat on your site absolutely free?
- Increase your sales by having someone logged in and available as many hours as humanly possible.
- If you have many employees, train more of them to be able to use your chat service.
- Ensure your chat users have the resources and training required to answer quickly what they can and know what to say when they don’t have an instant answer.
- Make sure all your answers are cheerful, helpful and friendly.
Rethink the Live Chat ICON Size and Position
Where you position your Live Chat function and the size of the graphic used to draw attention to it can have a huge effect on how much it is used. I had a client who accidently bumped their Live Chat function to the top right of their page and made the icon excessively large. This occurred during a redesign and was not intentional.
Sales doubled during the short time the Live Chat icon was large and prominent. They dropped back to “normal” as soon as they moved it back to the bottom of the left column under their product categories. Until their designer’s “mistake” accidentally bumped it to the top right I didn’t even know they had Live Chat – and apparently neither did those shopping on the site!
No Live Chat? Get the Best Hosted Live Chat FREE Now
Volusion offers totally free hosted Live Chat to any Web site that desires it. The free Live Chat version allows one person to be logged into the Live Chat from any location. A small business could log out at work and then back in when they get home.
Be Creative in Manning Your Free Live Chat
- Don’t assume you can’t keep your live chat open longer hours at least for the holidays. You could train friends, family, or employees to work from home answering your live chat. The more they know about your products or services the better. Or you could log in and turn up the volume so you could answer while you’re relaxing in front of the television. The sale you make could make it all worthwhile.
- Be sure you select a Live Chat solution that allows you to log in from an unlimited number of computers. Volusion allows one person to be logged in at a time from anywhere on their free version. They charge for each additional simultaneous log-in. Even though their service is considered one of the very best, their Live Chat pricing is lower than any others I’ve checked. (And you can’t beat free for this quality Live Chat service.)
LIVE CHAT SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS:
- Bold 360 Chat – Live Chat Performance Benchmarks
- LivePerson – Their site indicates an 18-20% increase in conversion rates due to live chat. On demand Webinar available.
- Activa Live Chat Proactive Chat
LIVE CHAT SERVICES:
- Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rates with 24×7 Virtual Customer Support and Chat Services
OPTIMIZE LIVE CHAT:
- ecommerceINSIGHTS.com – Let’s Chat About Live Chat for the Holidays
- AutomativeDigitalMarketing – Why Live Chat
- GrokDotCom by FutureNow – Make Your Live Chat Persuasive
- ClickZ – How to Screw Up Live Customer Chat (And How to Fix It)
- GrokDotCom by Future Now – Quick Tip: Use Live Chat Transcripts to Boost Conversions
- InternetRetailer – Forrester Analyst Shows How Web Retailers Win in Tough Times
- GrokDotCom by FutureNow – 3 Ways to Lose an Online Sale
- GrokDotCom – Warning against Being TOO Aggressive with Live Chat and How to Tell When You’re Being Too Pushy
- Website Magazine – High Impact Tweaks for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Ecommerce Tips:
- NEW: Ecommerce Mistakes That Make You Look Like An Amateur
Gail Gardner
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Live chat is the way forward for this tech savvy generation in customer support. Customers are looking for easier options to reach out to companies and there is no better way for it than live chat.There will definitely be a boost in sales when you use live chat services. we are a company who provides live chat services and our customers have seen incrrease in sales once they started using our services.
Yes, live chat is the new vogue!
But organizations should take care not to ask too many details before a potential customer can actually talk to an agent.
Ive seen websites asking users to fill 5 – 6 fields before they connect to chat. This is a serious deterrent.
If phone support, and email support were the leaders in past. I think live chat is the future of customer support services. Its more effecient. It puts less pressure of the Operatore as well as the customer, further, in this world of competition, one can provide personalized services to their clients using live chat support, so your customers sticks to you. Further, its most of the chat softwares teh transcripts are saved in the server, so people can keep a better check on the chat operators working for them.
Live chat options are fantastic, providing they work well! I have often found that the waiting time is outrageous and indicates a lack of being prepared for the service requirements of potential clients.
Having customers supported through (Live) chat does build buying confidence and can perk up sales. It sure is easier to ask someone directly rather than browse through endless pages in the site.
I have been encouraged to buy numerous times, particularly when considering online services, specifically due to the presence on live chat for customers. Many of my most reliable ISPs have been recommended by me for this very reason.
Yeah live chat icon placement, size, and color can be split tested for maximum effect.
A tip for those who are thinking about using live chat:
Develop a system for answering your customers from the start.
It would be better if you’re following some basic guidelines in dealing with your customers and the transition from doing live chat yourself to handling it to outsourcers will be much smoother.
What you need:
– Primer on your products and services.
– Greetings. opening spiel/script.
– Spiel for answering FAQs. Different variations of your spiels that you can copy and paste
– Closing spiel
I think that a live chat is a must have for an ecommerce. I also found another free chat software: livezilla. What do you think about it?
I haven’t done any research on livezilla and probably won’t because I am not currently working with any ecommerce sites. I know and trust Volusion and once I make a choice I only change my recommendations when I have time to research further.
growmap would love you to read ..How Much is a Memorable Logo Worth?
thank you for this blog. I understand the value of live chat because, i have worked in a live chat support team for almost 3 years and I have seen how we used to resolve the issues of the customers more effecciently and effectively without much hold.
Further, in live chat the service received by the customer is more personalized. 🙂
Hello Manohar,
As you noticed, live chat is a great way for potential customers to get immediate answers. Any ecommerce store that does not have live chat is losing sales because people don’t want to email and wonder if they will ever get an answer. If they can’t talk to you they’ll simply go elsewhere.
growmap would love you to read ..Support Small Businesses
I love to get a real human being when I need help. Nothing is more frustrating than wading through 10 min of automated menus, only to be disconnected or have my problem unanswered.
I totally agree. When voicemail first became popular at major companies I used to call it “voice mail hell” and will often hang up and call back and pick every option until I can get a human. If the question I had was simple I wouldn’t be phoning.
growmap would love you to read ..Building Traffic Using Anchor Text
Online chat plays an important role.With help of online chat,customer can solve their queries one to one..no one another person cannot be interrupt on this conversation..We can easily convenience the customer also.
I can imagine that face to face chat is the best way to sell someone on your product or whatever you are selling. I think people tend to trust you more when they can see you and your product in person.
Thanks for the live chat descriptions. I have been looking for my business for ages and can never find the right one. Thanks for the link to that site. Great information.wonderful article.
Great points made in this article– we couldn’t agree more. Clients using our specialized Live Chat Ecommerce services for digital auto dealerships sell more cars, and sell them faster!
.-= John Hiemstra´s last blog ..Augmented Reality: An Ecommerce Innovation To Watch =-.
Might as well put a live chat on my site.
Thank you for the great guide!
I’ve thought about this often, and bringing back my e-commerce, Ill have to look into it more….just gotta figure out how to train others to use it.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Are You Thankful For Your Blogging Community? =-.
Hi Dennis,
I highly recommend reading Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think. Check out the excerpts and links at the bottom of my post Why Conversion Rates are FAR More Important Than More Traffic.
Instead of thinking about training people you have to make it really obvious in placement and how it works super simple. Both his title and one of my favorite quotes explains why:
“2% of people think, 3% THINK they think and 95% would rather DIE than think”… i.e., if you can make it so easy they don’t have to think you will do far better.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Blog Outreach: 8 Compelling Reasons Why You Should Be Doing It Now =-.
I’ll get the book because you have mentioned it before as well, but I’m not sur wht that has to do with my comment here.
My point was, there is no current way for me personally to live chat for as long as live chat should be open…those that use it should have it available at least for full business hours, if not 24.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Whoopsy Commentluv Is Busted! You Have Permission To Leave ONE Link. =-.
Hi Dennis,
I was just thinking about this today – that if we have sites that offer products they really should have LiveChat but it needs to be all the time.
We could coordinate bloggers in different countries to man live chat. That would take some doing to set up but could increase sales.
growmap would love you to read ..How to Use TwitterFeed- Consistent Twitter Presence
I am always available for live chat on my website, 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, but oddly enough, we haven’t had anyone use it yet! We have a very big icon on the website, but most people will just call and talk to me about a product instead.
Hi Chuggin,
I predict that if you move your Live Chat icon up to the top right above your search box that more people will use it instead of calling and reduce your spending on phone calls.
Your Questions (phone number) call to action is far more prominent in position than your Live Chat. Many people tune out most of the page including below the fold (anywhere you have to scroll to see) and areas outside the center of the page.
Although the location is commonly used in ecommerce sites I suspect most shoppers only use the left navigation sidebar when they want to navigate – and not to find things like Chat.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How Guest Blogging Can Change Your Life =-.
where is the live chat button on your site? I didn’t see any button on the home page.
Hi Manu,
Since I am not an ecommerce site I don’t have Live Chat installed here. My current focus in assisting small local and online businesses and bloggers through Social Networking so most of my interactions occur in the comments of this blog or on Twitter.
When you wish to put keywords in your comments I recommend you choose one phrase or the other for better results. Remember that your keyword phrase should be what someone is actually searching for in a search engine. The longer it is the less likely you will appear for anything.
Build links through commenting and in-content links alternating the two phrases and you can eventually rank for each of them.
growmap would love you to read ..Building Traffic Using Anchor Text
Very nice post. It is so true that customers will have answers and you need to be able to give them an answer, otherwise your sale is gone. Having a live chat has become very popular amongst online business.
This is far more important than many realize. I worked with a store that accidentally moved their Live Chat icon from the bottom of their left navigation column to the top right near the checkout. They didn’t do that on purpose; it happened when someone was working on their store layout.
The icon was also much larger than usual. Sales doubled that day and dropped back to normal when they put it back where it was. Based on that I recommended they make the icon larger and move it back up to a more prominent position. In hindsight I believe near the checkout is the PERFECT place for a Live Chat button.
Just having live chat is not enough. Stores must make their live chat friendlier. You want to invite your shoppers to use it – not create a barrier by asking for personal information. Most just don’t know how much better their sales could be by making their chat more inviting and friendly.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Best of GrowMap: Our Pillar Foundation Content =-.