The Pursuit of Making Money OnlineLive Help Will Increase Sales
Ecommerce October 23rd, 2007
Live Help - It’s Faster than Email (and phone)
Recently, I started implementing Live Help (or Live Chat) onto a couple of my client’s ecommerce websites and we immediately started to see an increase in sales. Keep in mind that there was no spike in traffic - and as I studied the logs I came to the realization that this software has helped to seriously reduce shopping cart abandonment rates.
Admittedly, I am a late bloomer to Live Help but I totally understand why it works as well as it does. I truly believe now that instant messenging is not a “new technology” the basis of a software such as this doesn’t feel so alien to customers, and may actually be preferable to a phone call and is certainly much faster than asking a question via email.
A Real Life Example
A customer this morning wished to place an order with one of my clients, but she did not know what a CVV2 code was… so she noticed the live help button and asked. About 30 seconds later, she placed the order for her son’s birthday gift!
Thanks to live help, we were able to retain this customer. We were also able to come to the realization that the CVV2 code needs to be explained during the checkout process.
Other common questions include things such as clothing sizes, what supplements stack well together, and which rims go best with a particular car.
Which Software Should I Use?
There are a ton of options out there for Live Help, and they all seem to have similar pricing structures. After plenty of research, I decided to use Provide Support after hearing some good reviews from fellow SEO/SEM associates. They have a 10 day free trial, but we fell in love with the software and took the plunge after about 2 hours. The software paid for itself within 3 hours :).
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October 23rd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Live support is important, but how do you stay online for 24 hours? or are your clients bigger businesses?
October 24th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Thomas, if the support person happens to go offline the Live Chat goes offline as well so to speak, and turns into a message box. If you can be available on Live Chat during much of the business day, it is well worth the investment. However, if a person can only commit 1-2 hours, it might not be enough to see any real difference in abandon rates. Hope it helps!
That being said, some of my clients are larger businesses while most are still considered small business. Two small business websites have seen an increase in sales due to this, because they’re generally in front of their computers during the business day anyways.
- Paul