Does Live Chat Improve Conversion Rates?

Yes usually, but only if it is implemented in a skilled and effective way. This is a bit like asking, “do telephones improve conversion rates?” The answer is that yes, they can but a telephone will only improve sales if someone answers them! If they are answered by a skilled salesperson then that can be a game-changer.

In a lot of cases live chat is installed on a website but then poorly implemented and executed. Common problems are that it’s down half the time and people are too slow to respond to incoming inquiries. Bear in mind that when it comes to live chat, 30 seconds is too long.

Chat boxes are closed and do not engage the visitor in a conversation specific to what they are looking at.  This is akin to a salesperson just asking, “can I help you?” when you walk into a store.

Does Live Chat Improve Conversion Rates?

Does Live Chat Improve Conversion Rates?

TIM BARRIE: Tim Barrie from Holistic here. In this video, I’m going to talk about live chat as a function on a client’s website and whether it’s worth implementing it, and if you do, to what extent does it help and how can you use live chat in a smarter way to make it work even better? 

How Live Chat Can Increase Conversion Rates?  

So, the first thing to say is if you just generally do a little bit of research out there, if you’ll search on something like this, you’ll find lots of information that will give you a sense of the fact that live chat does increase sales and it will give you suggestions on, well, how to use live chat to get a better conversion rate and in our experience, it makes a massive difference. If anything from experience this is underrated, here’s a good example of the kind of average conversion rate somebody can get. 

In our experience, you can significantly increase over this conversion rate when you use live chat in the right way. So what I really want to focus on is how do you get this kind of result and an even better result. What’s the right way to do that? 

Examples ad Comparison of Live Chat Functions on Website 

And I think the best way I can do that is to show some examples. First, I’m going to do is I’m going to go to this site and I’m going to refresh the page and what we’re going to do is we’re just going to take a look at the live chat function as it pops out.  

You can see here how we’ve got a picture of an individual, a name of a person, and a specific message. This one’s not very good. It’s pretty generic and what you need to understand with live chat is akin to when somebody walks in a retail store of some kind, and a sales assistant comes up to them and says: “Need any help?,” “can I help you?” and while having salespeople in the store will definitely increase sales than having no salespeople there, and having them greet people and initiate a conversation does work, that kind of message is probably the least effective way of engaging with clients. But this, let’s start with the basics. So, notice on this one how it’s open, it pops up, it has got a person, a name, specific message, and a place to type your question.  

Why You Should Make Sure that Your Live Chat is Available All the Time 

Now, if I compare this to a live chat that’s implemented on another site, you’ll see, well, it’s offline. That’s the first thing and down here. If you’ve got live chat and you don’t man it all the time, you’re in a race but you’re not even starting the race. That’s problem number one. When we’ve seen people implement live chat, we see this a lot where they just won’t consistently make sure that it’s available all the time.  

Another example here is the opposite case to that where it’s available but it’s just a little message saying online: “Let’s chat online.” So this is not quite akin to a salesperson going up for somebody. It’s a salesperson standing at the back of the store, waiting for some client to come up to them and initiate the conversation, and certainly, that’s part of not having live chat, and it’s better than not having salespeople.  

Features of Live Chat That Will Help Increase Conversion Rates 

But of course, you can imagine if you’ve got a good salesperson that is actually approaching the customers, your conversion rate is going to be much higher and it’s close, I mean, it’s kind of cryptic, and compare that to the previous one where it was open, there’s a picture of an individual. Pictures of individuals, we know, increase conversion rates, because people get a sense of somebody’s specific being there as against this more generic message. 

All in all, this one. Let’s just refresh the page so it comes back up. This one is better than what we’ve seen before. But there’s an even better way and more efficient way of doing this. Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to this page, I’m going to go to in a new browser, so we can see what happens the first time I visit this page. So I’m just going to put it into a browser and we’re just going to go there and see what happens. Now there’s a delay. So, it gives somebody a chance to observe it.  

Now, what you’ve got is a very specific message prompting somebody associated with it. If you’re looking at this, it’s some kind of message that’s specific to what they’re looking at, and that’s it! 

It’s again, a picture of an individual, a different person, in this case, a different message. It doesn’t matter if this person is real or not. They’re not going to know the difference but it gives the perception that there’s somebody specific.  

This is much more akin to a salesperson coming up to somebody tat’s coming in the store, they’ve not pounced on them, immediately they walk in the door, there’s a delay, and then when they start looking at something specific, they then come up with a message that is specific to something that they’re looking at. It’s up, it’s open, and you can have a chance to click on it here. You can get rid of it very easily. You can click on the X, that’s no problem.  

Prompt Response on Live Chat 

This is what makes all the difference. If you’re going to have live chat for goodness sake, make sure that it’s running, don’t be offline, if you’re not in the position to have live chat on your site, most of the time, don’t implement it. If you do have live chat, another critical issue is, to make sure that you’re able to respond very very quickly. I’ve used live chat and I’ve seen something like this. I’ve responded. I’ve asked a question and nobody came back to me. My patience level was about 20 seconds when I didn’t get a response for 20 seconds, I actually felt negatively towards the website that had the live chat. From my point of view as a consumer, why have the live chat give me a message, “Oh great! I’ve got a question. I’m desperately trying to answer a question. Does this product do X? Does this service provide Y?  

Here’s my chance to get a simple answer to that question, I clicked on it, typed a question and there’s no response. That is annoying. So, if you have live chat, and you don’t man it, you’re wasting your time. If you have live chat and you don’t respond and you’re not in a position to respond instantly, you actually have an opportunity to increase your conversion rate and create a negative experience for the client.  

Things to Keep in Mind When Considering Implementing Live Chat on Your Site 

Think of live chat as salespeople. This is a sales process, don’t outsource it to a marketing company. It is a sales process. It’s all about engaging with the client. It’s very akin to a retail store of some kind and having salespeople on the sales floor. And it’s not just having salespeople somewhere in the store, and they’re standing around not doing much.  

How good are they? Are they actually effective in approaching customers and saying something relevant to what they’re doing and engaging that client in a conversation? Those are the things to think about when you’re considering implementing live chat.  

To get the best out of live chat on your website consider the following:

1. Most live chat inquiries can come outside of normal business hours
2. Most visitors to your site or more importantly your product page will not stay there long
3. If they have a question and you do not respond within 20 seconds they will assume no one is there and move on
   • Best case you will have missed an opportunity, worst case they will be irritated that you are not responding…
4. A well-implemented live chat function being open with an image of a real person
5. They will ask a question that is unique to the specific page the visitor is on

Useful Articles About Live Chat

How to Boost Your Conversion Rate by 45% with Live Chat
How much does live chat increase conversion?

See also

Basic retail sales training (works perfectly on a store sales floor and for chat applications)

• https://www.slideshare.net/pjgrethel/seven-steps-of-a-sale