Have you ever been browsing a website and a chat window popped up asking if you need help? Most likely the answer is yes! Live chat on websites is extremely common nowadays and can help in the buying process of a customer or client. If you’ve got a website and don’t use live chat, you may be missing out on a powerful sales tool!
What is live chat?
It’s an addon for your website that allows your visitors to speak to you via text, much like they would on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. It can take the form of a button in the corner of your website that visitors can click on to start asking you questions about your products or services, or you can set it to automatically “pop up” five or ten seconds after a visitor has been on your site and ask them a question such as “Hi is there anything we can help you with?” If the visitor replies, this is a conversation that may not have happened without live chat!
How do I reply to questions on live chat?
As soon as a visitor writes something, you’re notified through an app on your computer or mobile device. You can then start answering any questions they’ve got in a live conversation. The chat can be set to only be active certain times of the day and any messages outside of that window will be converted to an email you can reply to when you get the chance. Multiple users can be added so whoever is available on your team can reply.
How much does live chat cost?
A quick google search will bring up lots of options costing from free to around £20 per month on average. Then there may be a cost from your website developer for putting it on your website which could be around £150 (one-off fee).
Our experience of using live chat on our website
We use a free chat called Tawk.to. Since we added it to our website in August 2017, we’ve had a lot of success and signed several clients that may have left our site if the chat window hadn’t popped up. It’s very easy to use and some of our clients will even use it to ask us questions if it’s not convenient for them to call or email. Here’s a quick video showing how it all works from the customer’s view and then ours.
