The Benefits of Adding Live Chat to Your Website

Online chat capability, or live chat as it’s now more commonly known, is a tool that’s often associated with big customer service departments. But these days, live chat isn’t just for call centers and IT help lines. Local businesses have discovered implementing live chat on their websites is a beneficial, cost effective marketing tool.

Live chat is an obvious way to add a layer of support to your existing customers. But how can it be used as a marketing tool? Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of live chat.

Live chat perfectly combines two common communication channels – email and phone. It allows your site visitors to get immediate information as they would with a phone call, while also allowing them to communicate digitally (complete with paper trail ) as they would with email.

Whether it's an existing customer, a solid lead, or just someone casually browsing, it’s crucial that your site visitors can easily reach out to your business. Live chat adds a simple, immediate way to contact you without the inconvenience of a phone call or dealing with the delayed response of an email.

Providing support through a live chat channel is a great way to covert site visitors into customers. The ability to instantly communicate with a potential customer will put you ahead of any competition that doesn't have this option.

However, just like not everyone who walks through your showroom doors is an ideal customer for your local business, the same goes for your website. Not every visitor is someone it would be worth spending time to convert into a customer.

That’s where live chat comes in. A quick chat conversation with a site visitor can help you qualify them (or not) as a lead.

Many people think that SEO is just about the keywords you use on your website. That's certainly part of it, but that’s not all.

Things like quality content, user experience , and the amount of time visitors spend on your site all contribute to SEO and your site’s rankings. This is where live chat can play a big role.

We’ve already established adding a live chat option makes for a better user experience. But consider how much longer visitors will stay on your site if they’re engaged in a chat conversation with you. More time spent on your site tells Google that your site is informative and is providing a good experience , which boosts your rankings.

Live chat can be a great all-around tool for your local business, there’s a right way and a wrong way to use it on your website. A bunch of pop-ups, audible chirps or dings, or constant prompting will only result in the visitor clicking off your site.

Instead, use a more subtle approach. The live chat option should be clearly visible on all pages your site, but it shouldn't be intrusive. The chat icon shouldn’t cover up other content or make it difficult to otherwise navigate the site.

Likewise, if your chat icon shows you as “available” to receive chats, make sure that someone on your team actually is available. Submitting a chat request only to be met with silence from your end will not leave a good impression on your site visitor

Interested in implementing live chat functionality on your website? Get with Locallogy , we can help!