5 tips for setting up live chat so it earns for you

Motivate visitors to write to you

Imagine you are a visitor to your own website. What would convince you to write in the chat? If the bubble above your chat only says "Do you have a question?", that will not motivate you to start a conversation – at best only the customers with a real question will write. But focus on the visitors who do not have a question yet. A friend of mine who offers online marketing services gave me a beautiful example. He used to have only "Do you have a question?" in the chat bubble, and on my recommendation he changed the line to "I am offering an hour of consulting for free". That single change convinced website visitors to start writing in the chat even when they had no question at all. They only wanted the free hour of consulting. In reality, my friend gained contacts on potential customers for free. Before you start editing the text in the bubble above your chat, always try to think about what your website visitors are interested in and what you can offer them.

Attract customers with interesting chat design

Once you have thought up an interesting line to motivate people, it is time to make the chat more visible. Make the chat contrast with the background of your site. If you have a light background, use a dark chat. If you have a dark background, use a light one. Try to make the chat visually coherent as well. If you have a dark chat bubble, it is not a good idea to make the chat bar dark too – it is always better to use two different colours for the bubble and the bar. What matters is that the chat is visible at first glance.

One way to make the chat stand out even more is to use your own mascot. A mascot attracts more attention than a bubble. Take a look at this example from the company Sunsystem.

Use automatic messages

If someone tells you that reaching out to website visitors is not a good idea, do not believe them – measure it on your own site first. On several dozen sites we measured how people behave when they are approached with an automatic message. That means they received a welcome message: "Hello, we noticed you have not used our new live chat yet. If you need any advice, do not hesitate to ask us :)" When a visitor received this message, it was recorded in Google Analytics. The site owner could then easily check how many visitors received the message and how many of them bought. Here is a sample of what we measured. In the chart below you can see the comparison between visitors who never came into contact with the chat and visitors who were approached with an automatic message.

The chart above shows that reaching out to visitors is the right tactic, because website visitors who are approached through live chat stay on the site 3 times longer and buy 5 times more often. If you want to measure how well reaching out to people works on your site, take a look at our short video tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7OBd6hyW6E

Reach out to people strategically

Come up with your own way of reaching out to visitors with automatic messages. One of our stores, for example, approaches customers after they complete an order on the site. The customer receives a message telling them about the affiliate programme: first they thank the customer for the purchase, then they explain that after registering in the affiliate programme the customer earns commission for recommending the goods.

Also remember that people from abroad can come to your site, so set up an automatic message for visitors based on which country they are from.

Use the offline mode of the chat as well

Do not forget that people can use the chat in offline mode too, when you are not at your computer. If you make it clear that you are not online right now but that they can still write to you, visitors will use it. Nobody wants to open their email these days and hunt for an address in the contacts on your site. Through Smartsupp chat you will receive plenty of offline messages every month. And thanks to an offline message you have the customer's email contact, which you can work with in the future, for example in marketing campaigns.