Live Chat: 5 Reasons Why you should use it

Live chat is one of the most neglected online marketing tools available to virtually every business owner.

The system is simple, imagine having an instant messenger (similar to AOL Instant Messenger, or Skype), where the people you chat with are visitors on your site.  As people browse your site, they can either opt into sending you a quick question, or you can directly message them with your question (ex. “How can I help you today?”)

Here are five good reasons why you should use Live chat:

Easy to Set Up – The majority of modern day live chat systems are easy to set up. Services such as www.olark.com, provide easy-to-follow instructions on how to install their live chat script on a variety of different systems. Anyone with some basic HTML knowledge should have no problem installing the system in a few minutes. Once installed, many of these services allow you to integrate it with popular instant messaging systems, so you can monitor visitors and questions right from your own desktop.

Some people don’t like to call – Many online visitors are most comfortable browsing the internet without calling a company for more information. For visitors looking for immediate assistance (rather than waiting for an email response), their options are either to find more information on your site, or go elsewhere. Don’t risk losing visitors who don’t like, or can’t call you. By offering a simple live chat option on your site, visitors can send you a quick question and receive their response in seconds.

Great ‘market research’ – Although it’s thought of as a customer service tool, Live chat is an excellent market research tool, allowing companies to get first-hand insight into what visitors expect, how they like their site, and what improvements needs to be done. So for example, if you chat with several people a day, and notice an ongoing trend of questions, you can use this information to make changes to the website and improve the user experience.

3x more likely to return – Market research shows that visitors who engage in live chat are 3x more likely to return to your site for more information.

Users spend 40% more time on your site – In addition to returning more often, many people, roughly 40%, spend more time browsing a website after engaging in live chat. By having questions answered directly, visitors are more informed and trustworthy of a website, encouraging them to learn more about you and your service.

Live chat is easy to use, accessible, and relatively inexpensive to set up. With the amount of information that it can provide, there’s no reason why companies small to large shouldn’t implement it on their site.