Integrating chat into your website can solve some basic problems and improve your customer satisfaction.
Answering questions and solving problems in real-time is an easy and cost-effective way to improve your page performance.
There are often two reasons to consider using a chat widget
Bounce Rate
If your visitors are not sticking around, it might be due confusion about your products or services. This is especially true if customers typically ask questions before they buy.
Bounce rate is heavily industry-dependent, but a typical Ecommerce website will have a bounce rate of 20-40%. If your pages are experiencing a higher bounce rate, your customers may not be finding the appropriate answers to their questions
Cart Abandonment
An abandoned cart is often caused by confusion at checkout, possibly with pricing or discounts.
You can learn more about how to use Google Analytics to track your campaigns here.
Is chat right for your business?
There are a things to consider when deciding whether adding a chat feature to your website is right for you:
- Are you selling products on your website?
- Do you drive traffic through targeted campaigns?
- Do you have a variety of options on your product pages?
- Do you have complex shipping or discount options?
- Do you or your staff have the ability to respond in real-time to customer queries?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is “yes”, chat may be a great solution for you.
Here are our top 3 picks for integrating chat into your website:
LiveChat is a paid tool with a desktop application and a WordPress plugin. Installing it is pretty simple. All you need to do is download the plugin and sign up with LiveChat’s service. You can also download an app to answer customer questions on the go.
Despite being paid, it comes with a 14-day free trial and deactivating is as simple as uninstalling the plugin. Piece of cake!
Ease of Integration – B
Moderately easy to set up, but many options to sift through without many recommendations.
Automation – C
Provides automated responses, but not complex message trees; difficult to set hours.
Mobile support – A
Mobile app allows messaging on the go.
Third party integrations – A
Includes webhooks and third party integrations with Zapier, Shopify, Mailchimp and many other applications for tracking and list building.
Analytics – B
Includes goals and sales tracking statistics.
Price – B
Not bad, with a starting price of $15 per month.
Overall – B+
HubSpot beats out LiveChat from a pricing perspective. It’s a completely free tool. In addition, it integrates well with the HubSpot CRM to provide advanced analytics data and list management.
HubSpot has another advantage over LiveChat in that it gives you a fairly simple step-by-step setup process and gives you recommendations. It was also very easy to set up agent availability hours.
Basically, if you’re looking to use HubSpot with any other CRM, you might look elsewhere. But for the price tag, it’s certainly worth a try.
Ease of integration – A
Extremely easy to integrate with a step-by-step process.
Automation – B
More sophisticated automated messaging (qualify leads, set up meetings, etc.).
Mobile Support – A
Carry out chat conversations with the mobile app.
Third Party Integrations – B
Chat application is designed to connect with feature-rich HubSpot CRM.
Analytics – B
Because it integrates with HubSpot’s analytics, robust offering.
Price – A
HubSpot is free to use as a chat application.
Overall – A-
Tawk.to is another great free option that has very simple setup, has a mobile app and a ton of integrations through Zapier. It also integrates with ChatBot, a platform with complex automated conversation trees.
ChatBot also gives you templates so you don’t have to start your conversation trees from scratch.
With a bit of work on Tag Manager, you can set up all of the more complex analytics for tracking the success of your conversations.
Price – A
You can’t beat the price of $0.
Ease of integration – A
Has a WordPress plugin which is simple to set up.
Automation – A+
Integrates with ChatBot to give you conversation trees, and starts with a library of industry-specific conversations.
Mobile Support – A
Has a mobile app for conversations.
Third party integrations – A
With Zapier you can connect Tawk.to with 200+ apps for automation.
Analytics – B
Using Tag Manager, you can track important interactions.
Overall – A
In conclusion
Chat is often forgotten as a way for business owners to connect with consumers at the point of sale. But they are often inexpensive or free, easy to set up and give you lots of options to help you optimize the experience.