I was discussing with someone today, regarding applications that business owners need. When we discussed about chat, he said.. But they will not use it, so why should it be there?
I immediately disagreed. NO! A chat in the website is necessary, even if there is no chat operator, even if it is always closed.
Why?
There are two main reasons.
A chat can provide useful statistics. Depending on which tool is used and how it is configured, you can learn more about your visitors, including where they come from, which pages they visit, and how they interact with your website.
You may also have a screen with the chat open and see in real time who is visiting and how they act. (I have done it :))
Second, it gives visitors another way to contact you. Not everyone wants to complete a contact form or send an email. Some people may prefer to leave a quick message while they are already on your website.
Imagine a user journey. They enter your website, they visit a page or two, and then instead of heading or searching for a contact, they immediately can turn over to the little chat icon, and leave you a message.
This can be specifically useful outside normal working hours, or around different time-zones. A visitor may have a question while looking at your services, and a chat option gives them the opportunity to send that question immediately.
I am currently doing some online seminars about Zoho SalesIQ, and I am also using the free version of it on a website. I am happy to see that it provides both visitor statistics and another way for people to get in touch.
I am taking some online free courses from zoho, and right now I am learning of what you can do with their own widget. I think that for marketing purposes, it is important to have a chat and if possible, connected with your CRM, or other apps.
https://lms.zohospark.com/ (I think you can also sign up using a free zoho mail version)
Do you use a chat option on your website?
i.e. Depending on your website, you could have a chat similar to scrobble.life - they have a chat that is always open for the community, users can write questions, and also see previous discussions
p.s. I am now using scrobble.life to write this post (still trying to test it out, I hope it goes well!)
