Your Live Chat Could Be Losing Leads. Here’s The Solution.

We all know chat is amazing.

With around an average 68% conversion rate when engaging with visitors to your website live chat tools are an absolute must for Conversion Optimization. According to FurstPerson, 77% of customers won’t make a purchase on a website if there’s no live chat option available.  The real-time chat is a great way to bring visitors back to your website, too. Emarketer found that 63% of customers were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat support.

Plus, it just makes for amazing customer service and often helps you find out what your customers are actually curious about, what they need to know before committing to a purchase, and instills confidence in them that you or your support team are really behind your brand and business.

I have spent countless hours testing different chat options. From general user experience, to testing how quickly they load, to design and functionality, price & options for it to scale and be customised depending on what you are offering and trying to achieve. And (*spoiler alert), I have found one live chat that excels in almost every area in comparison to other chats.

The Experience That Led To This Blog

This post isn’t about bagging out different options and if you find something works for you, by all means, continue. But I noticed something the other day when I jumped on a Physiotherapists’ website and wanted to ask a simple question about who I should see after straining my back deadlifting at the gym.

They used Drift chat. Which is a popular free chat option amongst Clinics in particular. My issue was though, I was on mobile. I clicked on the icon, and clicked again, and clicked again. Nothing… I had to quite literally press and hold the icon for it to show up. Frustrating, and I can guarantee that 9 out of 10 people would not even bother to keep trying this. It is only because I build websites and use chats often that I was determined to make it open.

Upon opening, I found the same issue with trying to enter my question. clicking, clicking, press and hold. Ok, now I can type. Then the operator wasn’t available and requested I put my email in. Clicking, clicking, clicking… and I’m gone.

I left. And that physio lost my business because I was frustrated!

The problem with this is that you as the Drift Chat owner have no idea this happened or if you use the free version how to get back in touch with me because I could not leave my email address. So the lead vanished into the oblivion of the internet.

Now you might be thinking, why didn’t you just pick up the phone and ring. Well, because like a large chunk of the population; I am an introvert. Plus I was already there, on the website, ready to make a booking. But didn’t know who with…

The Solution To Live Chat: Tidio

Why I am telling you this. Because I have a solution. As I said, this led me to explore alternatives. And hands down I found the one that was the most affordable, worked perfectly, was scalable and, more importantly, didn’t slow down my website loading time was Tidio Chat. They not only offer a free version, but their premium plans are quite affordable for what they include

How can you trust me? Well, because I use it here on our site (see the bubble in the bottom right?) and it has been amazing!

So, exactly what are the benefits of live chat? Well, Tidio themselves actually have a few great blogs about this (1, 2, 3) but to summarise, with live chat on your website, you can:

But, isn’t that the same as all live chat? Granted, yes. So, what exactly set’s Tidio apart? Let’s look at the 3 biggest benefits we have discovered…

The Tidio Difference

One of the greatest technical aspects that affect your website’s ability to work for you is site speed. For every three seconds of a page loading, you will lose just over half of all visitors. To put it another way, for every second of impatient agony you’re causing visitors with slow load times, you’re losing conversions and profit. Site speed is INTEGRAL.

The more functions, features and integrations your website has the ‘heavier’ your site will be and generally the slower it will load.

As a start point you want your site to be loading without Chat, Google Analytics & Tag Manager Codes, YouTube Video Embeds or Facebook Pixels to be fully loaded in between 1 – 3 seconds max! Adding live chat adds roughly 5 – 6 seconds (for a good one like Tidio) and we’ve seen 7 – 10 seconds for most other chats.

Almost every website we’ve seen with live chat has an average load time of between 11 and 18 seconds, we even saw one where the chat led to a 30 second load time! And when we take off those live chats the load time drops by 10, 15 and even 18 seconds! That is massive!

However Tidio seems to be a lot lighter than any other live chat plugin and we have even managed to score a page load speed of 7.8 seconds with Tidio chat (see below). That is also with a Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics! Take those features off and you’re looking at a 1 – 1.8 seconds load time. Nice!

Tidio provides a web app and a desktop app that serves as a central hub for most of your communication. I’m talking chat inquiries, email campaigns, Facebook Messenger chats. Yeah, you read that right. You can integrate Facebook Messenger into Tidio so that any time a customer messages you on Facebook it shows up in your Tidio inbox for you to respond to without the need of having ANOTHER tab open just for that. This get’s super powerful when you create Chatbots; Facebook Messenger chatbots anyone?!

It gets better. Imagine a customer is on your site. You can see what page that customer is on and can initiate a chat with them based on that page (although, this could be creepy). You can set up a pre-chat survey to collect their email address which then automatically tags them as a ‘Lead’ in your Tidio contact list. As you are chatting you can see what the user is typing before they even send the message (weird, I know) and get your response ready beforehand or, better yet, just use a pre-written ‘quick response’. Maybe you don’t know the answer? Just reassign them to another operator who does or tell them you will send them an email with the answer, which you can do straight from Tidio… even after the chat has ended. Yeah, Tidio can send emails. Oh, you can also set up a chatbot to automatically answer some of the more frequently asked questions.

That’s just the beginning of how Tidio simplifies communication. And we haven’t even gotten into the integrations with Mailchimp, Zapier, Shopify, Hubspot etc.

Now, this is where Tidio shines brightest. Just consider the pros and cons of live chat and chatbots…

If you were to combine the two Pro’s & Con’s lists you will find that chatbots and live chat (operated by a human) compliment each other perfectly. When you are away, chatbots still work. When a user asks an easy question, the chatbot saves you time by answering. Chatbots can direct users to correct pages, walk them through the booking/purchase process, provide shipping updates and SO much more. Here are some stats: Chatbots can save companies up to 30% in customer support cost, 47% of consumers are open to buying items through a chatbot, An estimated 67% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot for customer support in 2017.

The bottom line is this; You want your website to convert customers even when you’re away. An automated customer service bot does just that. It makes you money while you’re sleeping.

So, what are some scenarios where a chatbot can benefit you?

#1 – Welcoming New (or Returning) Visitors

When a visitor lands on your website a chatbot can welcome that visitor with a welcome message. Perhaps something like “Hey, great to see you! Let me know if I can help” to create some rapport. Or maybe they’re on your pricing page and the bot says “Hey, are you interested in our product?” and when they respond positively the bot can ask for their email address and tag them to follow up in your CRM.

If a user returns Tidio recognises them and shows them all the previous information they had provided. A chatbot could also welcome them back with a discount code to encourage them to purchase; “Hey [first name], welcome back! Here’s a discount code: 5%OFFMYSTUFF”. You could set that discount code to show only if that customer lands on a specific page (like a ‘Pricing’ page, or even if they’re about to leave the page!

PRO TIP: Integrate an email drip campaign using Tidio Chatbots to warm up that lead a bit through email. If they haven’t returned in 7 days the chatbot can send another discount code to their email; 10%OFFPLEASECOMEBACK.

#2 – Abandoned Cart or Form Reminder

So a user has added a product to their cart and didn’t check out. Or maybe they started to fill out an appointment form but didn’t end up sending it. A chatbot can trigger to help answer any questions or clear up any doubts in that instant; “Hey, there are still items in your cart! Are you sure you want to leave them?” or “Are you sure you want to leave this form? Let us know if you need assistance.”

PRO TIP: An email can be automatically sent to remind them if they ignore or miss the chat.

#3 – Conversational Landing Pages

Traditional static landing pages are becoming less effective. Today’s customers want instant engagement, connection, & conversation. Think about it; when someone clicks on an ad or a link in the email, they, most likely, want to connect with your brand. Your marketing message has captured their interest, and now, they want to know more.

You already know, that, in such a situation, a static landing page simply won’t cut it. Your potential customers don’t want to dig through lengthy copy to find the answer to their questions anymore. They want their questions answered quickly.

Enter the alternative to a traditional landing page – A conversational landing page (sometimes referred to as a landing chat page too.) In the simplest terms, it’s a landing page with a chatbot instead of an inquiry form, like this:

Just like a landing page has different sections for ‘Benefits’, ‘Inclusions’, ‘Pricing’, ‘Testimonials’ a landing chat page with a chatbot set up can do the same thing plus WAY more. Set up a chatbot that quickly explains the product then offer a few options like; ‘how much’, ‘why choose this product?’, ‘see what our customers say’, or even set up FAQs like ‘what about [specific aspect of product]’. Create answers for every question and let a chatbot offer up those answers instantly instead of forcing the customer to search for it in a sea of landing page copy. And then if they STILL didn’t find their answer either collect their email or just in and answer their question directly!

PRO TIP: Tag the user so that next time they visit your site offer up a discount code. OR just offer them a discount if they’ve spent longer than 5 minutes on the page to speed up the conversion. Also, set up an email drip campaign to help build upon their interest.

Conclusion

Yeah, it seems like I am a bit biased towards Tidio. And that’s because I am. But not because I’m being paid by them (I wish) or I know them personally (not at all). I am biased because after searching for months and trialing what felt like hundreds of live chat options I could not get past Tidio. I even tried to ignore it and just use the more popular options.

But nothing beats a live chat that; 1 – Doesn’t drive users away by bloating site loading speed. 2 – Allows for clear communication across multiple platforms (including email). 3 – Has the most powerful and intuitive chatbots I have ever seen.

It seems Tidio has been designed for people who want their website to work for them. And since implementing it on our own plus many other websites we have seen leads, conversations, and even conversions grow.

(And we haven’t even spoken about all the integrations)