As well as building holiday rental websites I also run 4 pretty successful e-commerce websites, and recently I’ve been looking at ways to improve my conversion rates on those sites. Often customers have a quick question they need answering before making a purchase, and it’s no different when guests are considering coming to stay at your gite.
Of course, they could just pick up the phone, but often people aren’t ready to talk yet or are scared of being ‘sold’ to if they engage in a telephone call. Additionally, if you’re based in a foreign country, the cost of the phone call could put potential guests off, and result in you missing bookings.
So I’ve been playing with various Live Chat tools in recent weeks. These are pieces of software which work just like instant messenger on your website, opening up a direct 2 way conversation between you and your customer. If you’re logged into your computer, the website visitor (or you) can initiate a chat session right on the page.
There are scores of technologies out there, and I’ve tried out a fair few of them. My favourite (and the one I’m using on this and my e-commerce websites is from Olark as their technology integrates with your preferred chat tool (Gtalk in my case) and the free version was adequate for my needs. You can even integrate it with your mobile, but that’s beyond my needs.
Whenever someone visits your site, they show as a contact in your Gtalk friend list. You can start the chat with them, or you can wait until they request the chat themselves which will usually cause a sound to play on your IM client (hopefully thereby eliminating the need to be sat in front of your computer all day long!)
Installation and integration with Gtalk was a doddle, as simple as cutting and pasting a bit of code into a WordPress sidebar widget (or put it in your website footer before the (closing) </body> tag. Chuck any q’s in the comments below or drop me a line if you need a hand with it.
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Closing the deal with Live Help
Of course, they could just pick up the phone, but often people aren’t ready to talk yet or are scared of being ‘sold’ to if they engage in a telephone call. Additionally, if you’re based in a foreign country, the cost of the phone call could put potential guests off, and result in you missing bookings.
So I’ve been playing with various Live Chat tools in recent weeks. These are pieces of software which work just like instant messenger on your website, opening up a direct 2 way conversation between you and your customer. If you’re logged into your computer, the website visitor (or you) can initiate a chat session right on the page.
There are scores of technologies out there, and I’ve tried out a fair few of them. My favourite (and the one I’m using on this and my e-commerce websites is from Olark as their technology integrates with your preferred chat tool (Gtalk in my case) and the free version was adequate for my needs. You can even integrate it with your mobile, but that’s beyond my needs.
Whenever someone visits your site, they show as a contact in your Gtalk friend list. You can start the chat with them, or you can wait until they request the chat themselves which will usually cause a sound to play on your IM client (hopefully thereby eliminating the need to be sat in front of your computer all day long!)
Installation and integration with Gtalk was a doddle, as simple as cutting and pasting a bit of code into a WordPress sidebar widget (or put it in your website footer before the (closing) </body> tag. Chuck any q’s in the comments below or drop me a line if you need a hand with it.
Go on... click it... you know you want to!
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