Does your website need a chat feature?

What are the benefits of a chat feature?

A chat feature has many advantages. Not only for your business, but also for visitors and potential customers. We have listed some of them for you.

Speed

By using a chat function on your website, you can always answer questions from your visitors immediately. This ensures that you can serve potential customers at lightning speed, making it more likely that they will actually become customers.

Always available

A chat function ensures that you can always be reached by your customers, visitors and potential customers. In addition, it is easier for potential customers to contact you. The threshold is a lot lower than contact by telephone, for example.

Analysis of your website

You can also use a chat function to analyze your website. If visitors keep asking the same questions, it might be because there is not enough information on the website, or that it is too difficult to find. This way you can keep learning new things and continuously improve the website.

Of course, there are many other advantages, but these are best looked at separately for each provider.

Different functions

Chat features for websites are offered by many parties. The prices mentioned in this article are the prices at the time of the article's publication date (1-4-2018).

The chat features usually not only come with a chat, but there are often other features attached to them. For example, Olark offers automated messaging. That means triggers can be set to send certain messages to visitors in response to preset events. Olark offers one full-service package from $12 to $17 per month. The price depends on the payment term chosen.

Another feature also often offered is "spying" on visitors. That is, you can follow along to see where the visitor is on the Web site and what he or she is doing. This can be very nice in support of your customer service. This feature is offered by Zendesk (formerly Zopim), among others. Zendesk is a provider that has several packages available. Each package has its own price and exclusive features. Prices range from a free package to $59 per agent per month.

There are also parties that offer their own chat services. They then basically take care of the first and second line inquiries, visibly reducing your incoming phone traffic. In addition, these parties also ensure that people are available 24/7 to answer the chats. After all, on weekends, chances are you won't be online at 7 a.m. to respond to website visitors live. Tawk.to offers this feature at the low cost of $1 per hour. The beauty of Tawk.to is that the chat software itself is completely free, while having all the "premium" features. The chat is just not perfectly customizable to your Web site and brand. To make that available, you have to pay between $9 and $15 per month.

Is a chat feature interesting for your website?

As you can see, there are quite a few benefits and useful features that come with a chat service. If you want more information, or have questions about chat features for your website, feel free to contact us.