The Benefits of Live Chat on Your Website

There’s no denying that the majority of consumer experiences begin online now. Even before someone leaves their house to step foot into a brick and mortar business – or even if they’re on their way and checking for an address – your business’s website will be the thing that customers experience before anything else.

In addition to a number of online marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization and targeted keyword searching, there are ways to improve the experience that a potential customer has on your business’s website. In this day and age, consumers efficiently navigate themselves from selecting a product to checking out online without any help whatsoever from a salesperson. Along the way, they may have questions – but especially with online businesses, people may not know where to turn.

For this, there is live chat, an excellent addition to your business’s website to improve the consumer experience and give you a beneficial conversion rate on their visit to your website.

You’re probably already family with a live chat – it’s usually a little box that pops up when you’re on a website and offers you support. Live chats may also be an option that a visitor to your website selects – rather than a pop-up – appearing as a small, discreet tab on the side of your webpage. Its availability there gives customers the option of chatting with someone from your business should they require additional assistance.

Live chats are an excellent digital marketing strategy that gives you a good conversion rate – “the percentage of visitors to a website that take a desired action.” Regardless of what you’re selling, the desired action of a visit to your website is to sell – whether that means getting someone to visit your physical storefront or ordering something off the website.

Stepping away from the technicality for a moment, let’s consider how the proliferation of online shopping has significantly changed the way we do business. Let’s take the example of groceries: through the years, we’ve moved from people fetching things from behind the counter of a general store to large grocery store chains that provide the customer a level of autonomy to online shopping, which is – for the most part – a solitary experience.

While in the past, a salesperson might encourage a customer to make a purchase, the experience of online shopping is quite different. Someone might “window shop” on a website, place a number of items into a “shopping cart,” and then decide at the last minute that it’s not a good idea to purchase. We may not know the exact reason why a customer decides not to buy online, but often time people do doubt their purchases when questions go unanswered. With live chat, your business’s website could intervene at this step and offer support.

Convenience

Because so much commerce, and indeed, communication, happens online, the convenience of a live chat is beneficial to your business’s website. These days, most people would rather send a text message or email than have a phone conversation. Live chat on your website gives your customer service representative access to potential customers and at the same time, it gives potential customers the option to communicate with you in a way that is convenient.

Trust

Even though we rely on computers and smartphones for much of our communication and dealings, there are times when it feels good to “talk to a real person,” doesn’t it? In sales, a lot of trust is required between the sales person and the customer. A 2014 KoMarketing survey reports that “52% of people consider that thorough contact about information is very important to build credibility.” If potential customers have deeper questions than information available on your website, live chat gives them the opportunity to clarify any doubts or concerns they may have about a purchase.

Cost Effective & Quick

With live chat on your website, you’ll save money on phone calls (live chats are estimated to be 20% to 30% cheaper than phone calls for business) and even more, customers will experience much faster response time. Many people are hesitant to call customer service hotlines because of the long wait. Email responses require a lot more time and effort than getting an answer right on the spot with live chat.

Our team at Increase Marketing is experienced in all matters of digital marketing. For a consultation and to learn more about adding live chat to your website, contact us.