Your Click-to-Chat buttons should always be placed tastefully and prominently on your web pages.  Live chat works best when it compliments the site and keeps customers focused on their visit.  The last thing you want is a customer coming to your site with every intention to buy and then getting distracted by poor navigation or hard-to-find chat buttons and leaving out of frustration.

2. Smart Proactive Chat Invites

Invite the right customers to chat at the right times.  You do not necessarily want to invite every customer, on every page to chat with your agents.  However, you most definitely want to offer chat to those people on your site who may be having trouble, or to those who qualify for promotions.  Remember, your live chat tool should not only allow you to interact with your customers, it should also give you a much deeper understanding of the people visiting your site.

3. Know Your Trouble Spots

Every site has trouble spots.  Pages where web site visitors seem to exit in mass numbers.  If you don’t know which pages are losing customers, you should.  Trouble spots on web sites can be the cause for over 50% of your web site abandonments.  Learn which pages are giving you the most grief, and make sure you have your chat buttons clearly visible.  Also, these are great pages to send out automatic invites after 30-45 seconds of idle time by your visitors.

4. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Your site has one purpose: to get visitors in the information they need as timely as possible.  That’s it.  Your web site is not there to showcase your ability to pick out pretty images, or to express your personal color palette.  Whether your audience is buying your product or retaining your services, your site should be a funnel to your key conversion points – be that a sale or a completed form.  Every path on your site should lead to that goal, and on every critical page live help should be ready and available to keep web site visitors on the path.

5. Greet Visitors Warmly

When a visitor clicks to chat make sure your agents receive them warmly.  Small things such as a smiley face can make a huge difference in a medium that lacks inflection.  Agents should always be pleasant, helpful and answer questions within 30 seconds of being asked, even if they are in multiple chats.  They are the public face of your organization online.  Take advantage of free training and best practices by your Click-to-Chat provider.

6. Integration

Your click-to-chat tool should not be a standalone application.  What good is another application that does not work with your infrastructure? You could have 100s of leads from live chat, but if they’re not integrating with your CRM solution, your email solution and your shopping cart solution; you’re losing time and money.  A good click-to-chat provider wills integration with all your important applications with minimal set up.  A great vendor will provide integration out-of-the-box with a single sign on capability.

7. Reports are Critical

Reports are the backbone to your web site and your click-to-chat.  They show you how well your agents are handling customers, how effectively chat is leading to sales, and give you the overall insight into what was once a black box of information.  Spend a few minutes each week reviewing your reports to ensure you are getting the most out of your live chat vendor.  The reports should be easy to read, export and easily integrate with your other online applications.

Learn more: http://www.velaro.com/HolidayEdge

To learn more about the Small Business Promotion, check out: http://velaro.com/HolidayAdvantage

twitter.com/Velaro_Inc

@velaro_inc

Any company that currently has a live help/live chat solution, please drop me a line: chad [at] velaro [dot] com

We’ll be available on Twitter at the event: http://twitter.com/velaro_inc or just @velaro_inc.

See you there!

Read the press release: http://tinyurl.com/57a82t

Find out more about how Velaro is helping small businesses: http://www.velaro.com/HolidayEdge

Follow us on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/velaro_inc

Broadcast is at 5:00pm EDT – http://wsradio.com/

RSS Ray recently sat down with Chad Ritchie, the Director of Marketing at Velaro, one of the leaders in live chat technology. Together they discussed how companies are using live chat to increase conversion rates, decrease shopping cart abandonment, and keep customers happy. Check it out:

http://www.rssray.com/blog/2008/10/17/ray-raps20-questions-with-chad-ritchie/