A 2009 study of Live Chat technology on websites revealed interesting data. Some of those findings are condensed for this report.- Of those website visitors that convert, a median of 61% do it during the same visit in which they chat.
- Chatters are 4.1X more likely to convert than visitors who don’t chat.
- Chatters that engage via proactive invitation are 6.3X more likely to convert than visitors who don’t chat. (Proactive invitations are requests made by the website operator to encourage a website visitor to engage in a chat conversation.)
2) Live Chat Button Placement
One area that affects the relative number of chats a website gets is button placement.
- Placing the chat button on a second page increases the number of chats a website receives by a median of 53% versus sites that place the button on only one page.
- Placing the chat button on a third page increases the number of chats a website receives by a median of 21% versus sites that place the button on only two pages.
- Placing the button on more and more pages continues to drive more and more chat volume, though the law of diminishing returns does apply.
3) Proactive Chat
Another way to drive chat volume is to implement proactive chat.
- The median percentage of website visitors that accept proactive invitations to chat is 6%, on average. This number continues to rise and people are exposed more and more to Live Chat technology.
The report suggested several ways to improve the "take rates" of invitations:
- Visitors invited either in the 0-10 second or 30-60 second ranges have a 67% higher acceptance over those invited after a minute or in the 10-30 second range. This seems to indicate that the best performance occurs when visitors are either invited early or allowed to spend some time on the page first.
- Visitors invited on or after the second page view have a 47% higher acceptance rate.
- Visitors invited after being on site for two to three minutes have a 79% higher acceptance rate than those invited earlier than that.
Live Chat Increases Sales
For the average website, adding live chat will increase conversions. The combination of chat engagement and the increased likelihood of chatters to convert indicates that conversions would increase by between 4% and 86%. The use of proactive chat could drive the conversion even higher.
Conclusion
The findings in this report are based on what I consider old fashion text chat technology. The Internet continues to evolve and website owners need to rapidly adapt to it's evolution or be left in the dust of their competition.
I have been testing a NEW chat technology for some time and the conversion rate is extremely high. I contribute the success to the fact that this new technology uses face-to-face webcam technology as its chat platform. When visitors can see the operator, LIVE face-to-face, then it is more effective in closing sales.
The HUMAN ELEMENT has to be part of the conversion equation, otherwise you remain in the shadow of your competition.
Check out http://www.websitecommunicator.com/ and take the 14 day trial. You may discover the 'missing link' you've been looking for. And, for avid Facebookers, there's a Facebook app included (for a limited time) that makes it possible to add a live chat box to your profile page. Now you can communicate with Facebook friends using your webcam on your Facebook profile page.
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