Introducing a live chat feature to your website

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ross McElroy-Gray
  • Start date Start date
R

Ross McElroy-Gray

Does anyone have any experience in integrating a live chat / help feature on an e-commerce site? I haven’t done any research yet but I assume there are a number of 3rd party providers? Can anyone recommend a provider / program and what are the costs etc…?
 
I've used Zopim live chat for just over a year over 4 sites. Easy to install. Free for one operator. Recently removed, the only reason being it became rather intrusive when viewing on a mobile.
 
Upvote 0
Upvote 0
Thanks for the links. I will read up. I have had a quick browse and found Livezilla is a free provider as far as I can see. I will check out Zopim to :)

It only needs to be 1 user for now
 
Upvote 0
Hi,
We use Livechatinc for our chat, and I think its great. It´s probably not the cheapest chat program out there but it has good features and support.
 
Upvote 0
Looks like there are many to choose from and with it being a quite simple interface. I guess we should just pick one and trial it.

Many Thanks,
 
Upvote 0
As others have said, Zopim is free for one user. We have used it for over a year and it is really good except if I don't interact with it for more than a couple of hours, it seems to disconnect so I have to force reconnect - we have an old website so it might be only an issue for us.
I don't find it intrusive on my mobile - it acts differently and stays at bottom unless customer clicks and then it opens a new window.

We have found it very worthwhile. We think sometimes a customer would leave the site - eg because they are not sure which dog wetsuit size they need for a breed, but with Zopim, we can help.

The other good thing is when we are offline, it offers them the chance to leave a message - without looking for email/contact info. Quite a lot of people use this and we can call them back next day.
Hope this helps.
 
Upvote 0
Upvote 0
i would definitely go for livechat app. they have nice mobile and mac apps so you can chat even if you're away. A bit pricey but worth it.
 
Upvote 0
yea livechat app is how we did it with my last E-Commerce role, lots of custom rules that can take care of allot of customer scenario's and only pushes users to make contact when all else fails to get the sale
 
Upvote 0
If you have an ecommerce site I would say it is a must really to have a chat tool.
We use livechatinc.
We have used it for over a decade and works great.
We not only offer it as a a sales tool for enquiries.
We also offer 24x7 support via instant live chat.
Our customers love it.
We actually interviewed an expert about this.
You may find it interesting.
Benefits of using Live Chat on Your Website
 
Upvote 0
We use Zopim and i can 100% recommend it! I've been using it on various sites for the past few years, they offer a free single user version and there's a great app available too!

The best thing about it is the installation, you include a few lines of code to the <head> tags on your site then control the settings through the Zopim admin panel.

By far the best i have used!
 
Upvote 0
My only 2 pence to input here is be careful with what you implement (this is from an end user perspective):

# I find the things popping up and asking me if I wan't help or to chat about something very annoying and if it's overly intrusive I will leave the site. Make it a link at on the side of the page or in the menu that someone can go looking for rather than have it shoved in their face.

# What is a hundred times more annoying is deciding to use them and it being obvious you are chatting to a robot who will rarely get you information you want. If I find that I'm off to another website.

Now that's just me, but I've never used a live chat option that didn't fall over at the second hurdle above.

Everyone else may love the things. I could be just a grumpy, impatient middle aged fart :)
 
Upvote 0

Latest Articles