Live Chat Software Usage Increases

Hi and Happy Valentine's Day! Today we researched "search engine" trends (via Google) to see how live chat software was faring. Not surprisingly, the popularity of offering chat services on web sites is still increasing.

2004 marked the time period where live chat services were starting to appear. Early versions were developed using installable "desktop" versions for operators - for Mac & Windows systems. But as the diversity of operating systems has proliferated, web-based console software has become the interface of choice for customer service representatives. Going into 2012, we're not seeing any slow-down in the use of our service; and we thank all our new customers!

We're often asked why web site owners should use live chat software. Without getting into fancy web site jargon, the easiest answer is it adds another opportunity for customers to ask questions about products/services. The fact that almost every major e-commerce shop online today offers some type of live chat should highlight the importance of having it on a web site. If you haven't tested our service yet, please do -- and give us feedback...

What Is The Best Live Chat Software?

Within the more popular web developer forums, a question often asked is "what is the best live chat software"? While every provider of live chat services wants to think it's their own product, the truth is that it depends on web site owners' needs.

Web site owners can implement live chat software in one of two ways -- by having their own chat "server" with the software installed on it, or by using "cloud" services (where the software is remotely hosted by the software developer). Method one provides more control, but also more management as a separate server and network will need to be provisioned -- requiring extensive technical skills. Method two - using "cloud" services - is the easiest as it only requires the owner to add a few lines of HTML to implement live chat on a web site.

We always recommend web developers/owners to "trial" live chat software before purchasing. That way the software can be extensively tested to see if it meets the needs of the site owner. If you're interested in evaluating our easily-implemented live chat services you can click on the FREE TRIAL link at the top of this blog.

North Carolina Bar OK's Live Chat Services

North Carolina bar's ethics committee advised on July 15, 2011 that Firms May Deploy Live Chat Service To Talk With Visitors on Firm's Website (source: ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct™)

It did caution lawyers not to "exploit" the information gathered through the use of live chat. This is true since much can be seen about a web site visitor as soon as they enter a web site (who referred them, what city/state they're from, computer and browser type, etc.). It probably makes sense for lawyer web sites to mention this gathering of "live" information in their terms of services (so "chatting" visitors aren't surprised by how much they know about them).

When you think about it, having live chat on a legal web site makes sense. What better way to add clients than to have the ability to answer questions (somewhat) anonymously for web visitors. Customers want to feel comfortable with the knowledge of the business before providing more personal information.

If you're a legal professional considering using live chat software on your lawyer web site, contact us and see how we can help improve your business, or sign up for a free trial on our web site to test the services instantly.

"White Label" Reseller Services Update

VARs (value-added reseller) are seeing a growing demand for live chat services and due to popular demand we've made several improvements to our white label reseller program. If you're an online service provider, web host, or ISP read on!

We've made it even easier to add web sites, operators, and departments through a web-based reseller portal. Now resellers can easily manage their customer sites and determine the appropriate pricing to charge for services.

If you're an online service provider interested in reselling live chat software, visit our white label reseller page for more information.

Refresh Your Real Estate Web Site

Now that the real estate market is starting to show signs of life after struggling since 2007, realtors should consider re-vamping their web sites to ensure information & articles are current, helpful, and professional-looking. It's too easy to have a site built only to let it languish with dated information. Web visitors use the Internet as their 1st source of reference when doing research for homes so it's important to have a useful site.

Web site real estate search functionality should be easy to use, allowing mixing of different sets of criteria (price, location, bedrooms, baths, lot size, price change, etc.). Coupled with detailed listing information and clear/bright interior/exterior images get buyers interested. Limited or complicated search applications will only frustrate prospective buyers - don't let it happen.

Real estate professionals may even be able to benefit from social channels like Twitter and Facebook. What better way to alert your followers of new listings! And these updates can easily be sent to customer smartphones (which recently exceeded PC sales worldwide). These applications are easily linked to from any web site, and allow customers to leave helpful feedback.

Chat Software Customization

The best thing about our live chat software is it's easily customized to meet customer needs. We're often asked for feature enhancements and we're happy to implement changes that improve our chat service.

Even requests for customized chat images are done by us for free. Need a new image for your chat icon? Just ask and we'll work to develop one that fits your site. Don't get stuck using template images -- design your own or have us design one for you. All absolutely free!

We want your feedback -- even for the smallest of features. Size of HTML input and text-area fields, reporting features, etc. We want this to be the best live chat service but can only do so with your help. Thank you again...

2010 Was Busy - Looking Forward To 2011

November and December are typically the largest sales months for e-commerce retailers. The holiday season brings out shoppers in droves, and the Internet only facilitates the ease of purchasing goods and services. Various media outlets reported strong online sales during fall/winter 2010 and 2011 is shaping up to be another strong year.

2010 was a busy year for us. We spent the year building relationships with customers interested in increasing online sales and customer service. Although we market live chat software services for e-commerce businesses, we provide much more than just software. Sharing live chat best practices (sending invites, accepting chats, responding to questions) helps our customers succeed and is one of many free services we're happy to provide.

For 2011 we'll continue developing relationships with new and existing customers, as well as develop/implement the feedback we've received to improve our live chat services. If you're not already a customer and want to learn more about live support and how it can improve your web site business, contact us any time.

Top 3 Holiday Season Tips For E-Commerce Sites

Now that the leaves have fallen off the trees (at least up here in New York), it's time for E-commerce sites to prepare the gradual increase of online shoppers. Although many early visitors to web sites are likely "just browsing" to get ideas for gifts, merchants should do everything they can to ensure the customer comes back to complete the purchase.

E-commerce shopping site owners often ask what can be done to prepare for the busier times of year. Today we'll share a few tips to help make the holiday season a joyous (and profitable) one :-)

Easy navigation

Customers want to find their product quickly and easily. Internal site search capabilities should be implemented and clearly accessible on the home page. The keywords used within the search should be monitored (either by reading the web server logs, or by back-end web site scripting) so an understanding of popular keywords can be capitalized upon.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Start advertising on PPC networks, or if you already do, consider increasing your bids. Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter will be where you want to focus, as they will have the majority of web traffic (especially since Yahoo now uses Microsoft's ad network to display ads). If you're listing specific products, ensure the "landing page" for the ad links directly to your product page (and not your home page). This will increase the change of making a sale.

It's about the customer (no, really!)

It can't be stressed enough how important customer service is, especially for any fledgling site. Although large companies often provide terrible service (yet somehow still stay in business) small business owners can't afford to make the same mistakes. Simple *and clearly visible* information like phone number (toll-free or not), sales/support email links, and live chat software build trust and inspire confidence for prospective buyers. With email, ensure they are responded to within hours (consider using live chat as it can prevent losing the customer (and resulting sale)).

With these top 3 e-commerce tips in hand, take a hard look at your layout, products, and customer service processes to ensure you're ready for business!

Automotive Industry Finds New Ways To Increase Customer Loyalty

Media outlets are reporting used car prices have been steadily climbing over the last year or so. Most experts blame the economy on the trend -- customers are more interested in buying "used" than "new". While this is great for individual car owners, the same can't be said for auto dealers with new car inventories.

For anyone who has experienced the new car buying process, it can be frustrating (we've certainly had our share of experiences buying cars through dealers). Fortunately car dealers have been looking for ways to increase customer service and loyalty through the dealership, and over the Internet. Some improvements:

* reduced "haggling" over pricing
* addressing customer issues quickly
* follow-up surveys

Auto dealers are improving their "online" customer service as well. The photos of inside and outside the cars are easy to view and really help with the car searching experience. Detailed options, mileage, CARFAX, and VIN information also help in the buying process. Additional auto dealer web site customer-friendly options:

* easily-accessible contact information (email and phone)
* live chat software allowing site visitors to ask questions anonymously
* online forms to request service appointments

Prospective buyers use the Internet as the first place to look when researching new and used cars. This underscores how important it is to have a professional-looking web site, easy-to-find contact information, and detailed information regarding inventory.

Why are some website visitors on my webpages for hours (as viewed through the operator console)?

Over time we've started to notice a few things when using live support software. Within the operator console (accessed via the 'Member's Page'), one occurrence we're seeing more often is web visitors who've been viewing a web page for hours! Unless your web page is REALLY long, it doesn't make sense for a visitor to be viewing a page for hours (unless they've fallen asleep :-). As we've tracked this intermittent occurrence, we're starting to believe what is occurring is the page is being viewed in a "tabbed browser".

Tabbed windows were introduced back in the last 1980s and increased in popularity (for web browsers) in the decades that followed. Before tabbed browsers were available, we were always left with having to open new browser windows if we didn't want to lose what previous page we viewed. For anyone who's used tabbed browsing, they know how easy is it to open dozens of tabs. It's also just as easy is to forget to close them. We suspect that's why some web page visitors are showing as currently viewing a web page for hours -- they've left the page open in a tab.

Use Canned Responses During Live Chat

Definition of 'Canned': "Used repeatedly with little or no change."

Due to popular demand we've implemented the ability to allow operators to create 'canned responses'. Canned responses are a great way to speed up responses during a live chat session. Once you've signed up to get the live chat software you'll log into the operator (agent) console, select "settings", then "canned responses". On that screen you can enter common responses you might use during a live chat. Addition and deletion of canned responses are easily managed.

Your canned responses will then appear in an easily-accessible drop-down list that, when selected, will automatically copy the text into the input field (where you'll then submit to the visitor sees your chat message). If you monitor/manage multiple websites you can set it up so that canned responses are only available to operators on a site-by-site basis.

Knowing When To Invite A Visitor To Live Chat

Using live help software can help owners of e-commerce sites increase sales and strengthen customer loyalty with website visitors. A feature such as "proactive chat invite" can be used to facilitate the assistance of website visitors (a chat invite is where the website visitor receives a popup message asking if they need live help/customer assistance)..

But knowing when to invite your website visitors to chat can be difficult for those e-commerce owners new to using live support software. Their first instinct may be to try and invite every visitor that enters the website; especially the instant they arrive. But for those of us who have encountered 'chat now' requests from other e-commerce websites, we've come to understand that constantly being asked to chat with a representative can be annoying.

Over time, and through various customer reviews/tests, it seems proactive invites to chat should be sent on a per-visitor-basis. As you watch the website visitor traverse your website, you'll get a feel of what they're interested in and/or looking for (the reason they're on your site). With that information in mind, a decision can be made when/if to send a proactive chat.

Sending proactive chat invites with live support software is useful in connecting with your customers. Using your best judgment, and a lot of testing, will help you best determine what works best for your e-commerce site.

How to do a 301 Redirect

While cleaning up the chat software service website we realized the need to use 301 redirects for the pages moved recently. Normally we would make the changes to page names/folders and move them around as necessary, but through the use of Google Webmaster Tools we've noticed the removal of pages is causing Google's spider to report several pages as 'not found'.

We assumed their spider would notice the changes and make the appropriate updates in their database but Webmaster Tools continued to report the pages as 404 (not found). At that point it made sense to implement 301 redirects (as suggested by Google) to let all search engines know about the changes. We've included some examples below for anyone else that needs them:

301 Redirect for (Classic) ASP

301 Redirect for PHP

301 Redirect for ASP.NET

301 Redirect for JSP

301 Redirects are also beneficial in that they can reduce the chance of being penalized by Google for "duplicate content". HTTP code 301 tells the bots/spiders the page has moved permanently. In contrast HTTP code 302 indicates the page has moved temporarily.

Now that we've implemented 301 redirects we'll be interested in seeing if this resolves the spidered-pages problem. If not we'll have to go through page removal next...

Website fraudsters - what can be done to stop them?

We manage several different e-commerce websites and it never ceases to amaze us the number of "shoppers" entering a website for one purpose -- to perpetrate a fraud. It's usually 1 of 2 types:

1. Visitor wanting to fraudulently purchase goods/services, usually through the use of stolen payment information.
2. Visitor is on the site to test credit/debit card numbers for validity; with no intention of purchasing or finishing purchasing process on website. They may go on to purchase goods at another site or sell the card information to other criminals.

Fraud #1 is usually easier to spot -- high-priced checkout items, going to a shipping address that (surprise!) doesn't jive with the billing address. It goes without saying the IP, billing, and shipping address should always be checked carefully for each and every order.

Fraud #2 seems to be on the rise. We can only assume the card numbers "validity" are worth more just using it to purchase goods (which aren't likely to arrive anyways). When we were first witnessing this type of website fraud, we thought it was automated bots submitting the payment information. But after testing CAPTCHA scripts on the payment pages, and watching the site with real-time monitoring, we noticed the submissions were being hand-typed in by visitors.

For either type of fraud monitoring the IP addresses is essential. What you'll notice: fraudster addresses are coming from popular "proxy servers" hosted at commercial dedicated server providers. When this occurs you're best bet is to block the IP of the proxy, but you may find that you'll need to block the entire "dedicated server provider's" IP block instead (why would your visitors be coming from dedicated servers anyways? :-)

Get your free trial use of live chat software today.