Should You Add Live Chat To Your Website?
Many business owners wonder if they should be adding live chat to their websites. There are a number of benefits that come from having live chat available and you need to consider this. Understanding the benefits can help you determine if live chat for your website is the best solution.
Customer Convenience
When you have a business website, you need to always think about the customer experience. One factor in the customer experience is customer convenience. You need to try and make everything on your website as convenient for the customer as possible and this is where live chat can help you.
A live chat system offers your potential customers immediate access to help. The wait times for live chat will generally be much shorter than a call center and your customer can do something else while they wait. A recent study has found that around 90% of customer’s state that they find live chat to be helpful and 63% state they are more likely to return to a website that offers this.
Cutting Down Expenses
All businesses need to look at ways to cut down on their expense and using live chat is a method you should consider. Many people do not realize that live chat will be a cheaper option than other support routes. Live chat software has been proven to save employee task time and phone expenses.
Some of the most noticeable cost reductions that you will see include a lowering of the average interaction cost for support. Efficiency will also be increased when you use live chat in your business because a single live chat operator is able to handle more than one conversation at a time. Of course, this might not be something that impacts your business too greatly if you are still relatively small, but it can help as you expand.
An Increase In Sales
The general trend with live chat is that it can improve your overall sales figures. This is due to a number of reasons including the fact that potential customers will have immediate help that can walk them through a sale. If the customer has any questions about a product or service, the live chat operator will be able to help them immediately without a break in the sale process. This will help reduce the number of customers who bounce away to other retail websites.
Adding a live chat to your website.
Additionally, once a customer has been engaged by a live chat operator, there is an increased chance of an upsell. Additional products can be suggested to the customer by the operator who is able to understand their needs and is in the perfect position to recommend additional purchases.
The increase in sales can also be linked to the fact that customers know they can easily get help when they have a problem. A customer is more likely to buy from a company where they can instantly get help than one that they have to email when they have a problem. The fact that live chat will not cost the customer like a call center would is another benefit which makes them more likely to buy from you.
Easy To Implement
Many people assume that implementing a live chat system on your website will be a hard task. This is not actually true because of the number of solutions that are available. These solutions all look at making it as easy as possible to add live chat to your website.
Of course, before you work with one of these solutions, you should research them. You will have to look at the pricing structure as well as the reviews other people have left. This will ensure that you are getting the right live chat solution for your business.
Top 5 Social Media Accounts For Your Website
Social media has become a key marketing tool in any business due to the technological evolution. Below are the top five social media accounts essential for your business.
1. WhatsApp
This site creates a platform whereby one’s contacts suddenly become an audience in all and any information that one chooses to share. Through this site, I can share my website with you my contacts in several different ways. These include:
• Creating a broadcast list, this is done by selecting the people one would like to share their website with, and just as you would send the link to a person, through this list, all those contacts, receive the link at the same time.
• Sharing the link, or information from my website through my blog status, which all my contacts can view, and by clicking on the link, they get to view my work as well.
2. Facebook
This was among the first social media sites launched, and although it is not as popular as it was initially, especially among the users, it is still very popular, and a great tool in sharing of information and websites.
Facebook Features and Functions.
The great thing about Facebook is people are vastly connected, and through the site one is enable to see what their ‘friends’ are doing, posting, sharing, liking and if interested can easily access that information as well.
Facebook allows and promotes websites by enabling one to start up an independent page for a website they may have, and through this page can share all the links and information from their website. Start up conversations from what they post about, and spread the word, and all this with the added advantage of having the ‘friends’ from one’s individual page.
3. Twitter
This platform, although the number of character per tweet is limited, is very reliable when it comes to sharing one’s website. A vastly shared tweet means that it is trending, and if this is the case with your website, then you are doing something right. The powerful thing about Twitter is the minute one individual agrees or in some cases disagrees with what you have said briefly about your website, or happened to link, and retweets, this refers to reposting your words, that there is the beginning of a new audience viewing your work.
4. LinkedIn
This is easily one of the most professional social media sites available, and as the name suggests it links one to as many professionals as they would wish, be it from their profession or more. Due to fact that this is a more professional site than social, it is the perfect platform to share one’s website as it clearly shows one’s work ethic, and as opposed to reading about what one does, people here can clearly see. Through this one is in a better position to build up a proper professional network where they can easily get mentorship and/or guidance and encourage from people who have experienced the same troubles and how to overcome. Also through this network, one’s website ends up being vastly shared and they can always count on positive criticism.
5. Instagram
As compared to the above social media sites, Instagram is the most visual, as it is more about photos and videos rather than words. However as opposed to what it was initially perceived by many as a personal album, currently it is being used as a platform where individuals can showcase their work, build up a portfolio, advertise their skillset through the profile, and link up all their work, websites included. This has shifted to the platform where creatives meet and exchange and share information, view short clips of one’s work. With this particular site, it is all dependent on how the individual portraits themselves on their profile, and how active they are in getting their information heard and seen.
What Is AMP And Why Do You Need It
If you are running a website you have probably heard of AMP before. However, if you are like most webmasters you have not heard enough about AMP before to really understand it or even know why you need to have it on your website. Once you know more about what it is and why you should have it on your website you will find that it is going to be a great feature for you to have. Then you will not have to be concerned about the item anymore because you will know exactly what it is and why you will need to have it.
Mobile optimized sites are preferred by Google when ranking sites in their search listings. This means that AMP can have SEO benefits for your contact. There are considerations regarding how your content is displayed on AMP pages. If you would like to learn more about using AMP on your website talk to an SEO expert in your area, like this SEO Cape Town company.
What Is AMP?
This is an open source project that is meant to help website owners. The AMP term actually is a shortened term for Accelerated Mobile Pages. Now, if you have been on the Internet at all then you know that you will have a lot of traffic coming from mobile devices. So you will want to make sure you look at the way to make your website even more mobile friendly and that is with the accelerated mobile pages and will help to improve the overall look of the products across all the different pages on the Internet.
Why Do You Need AMP?
If you want to make money on the Internet you will need to get AMP. This is going to be one of those things that will help you out in getting the website to be more mobile friendly. So you will not have to be concerned about your website looking a little bit off compared to the rest of the websites. What else is great is this allows you to have a uniform look to your website as well. So you will have the same looking pages that you find on the tablets as you could get on the iPhone or Android phones.
Now, something else this does it helps to streamline the ad process as well. You may think that is a little odd, but you need to realize that the ads are what will help keep your website going. So you will want to make sure you have these streamlined so they will continue to look great across all the platforms and actually be seen. Nothing is worse than having a perfectly laid out site with the buy option only to have people unable to see those ads because of the device they are on.
Introduction to AMP.
Finally, you will like the fact that this is going to increase your speeds loading time. Now, this is more for the mobile devices and it will allow your content to be found and read on the Internet. So you will not be left trying to figure out what you could be doing differently to lead to more sales or even how you could speed your website up. It really does not matter if your website has the knowledge to stop a volcano from erupting if it does not load, people will not read it. So the speed factor is a major plus as well.
Running a website means you have probably beard of the AMP project before. When you have heard of this, you will want to make sure you know about what this is and how it is going to help your website out. By knowing about this information it will be very easy for you to get the right products for your website and know it is going to work great for what you need to have it doing. Without this, you could have a slow or even clunky website that no one wants to visit.
5 Actionable Website Design Ideas For Your Business Website
Having a website for your business is important, but if it is not designed correctly it will not help you as much as you think. Fortunately, there are a number of actionable design ideas that you will be able to implement to help your website convert correctly. These web design ideas are simple and easy to use, but will make a big difference.
Start Using Vector Graphics
Vector graphics are more important than you might imagine because they are pleasing to the eyes of the user. Vector graphics will help your website communicate with your user while lowering the amount of content on the page. These visuals also offer a one-on-one basis of communication which is highly relatable.
The use of vector graphics is often known as visual marketing. They are also frequently used for branding. Brands will use vector graphics because they are easy to understand and lightweight which improves the overall load speed of your website.
Use The Hamburger Menu
The hamburger menu is not new, but there are many websites that are still not making use of this. This menu is the best option that you have right now and you need to make use of it. These menus are well known and offer a clean design.
Hamburger menu in the responsive navigation bar.
A hamburger menu also offers a reliable menu for your website. You need to ensure that you have this menu available on the mobile version of your website as well. This is due to the fact that they hide your menu options until the user wants to see them making the mobile user experience better.
Track And Trail Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs can help with website navigation and you need to consider this. This design idea will help you create an intelligent and guiding navigation system on the website. There are 3 types of breadcrumb menus that you should consider and they are attribute, location and path breadcrumbs.
Track and trail breadcrumbs are very important if you have an e-commerce website and will be selling to users directly. These menus will ensure that the user knows what they have done and the steps they still need to complete to finalize a purchase. Not having this menu as an e-commerce website could cause problems in the checkout process.
A Dynamic Video Background
There are a lot of people who feel that a dynamic video background on your website is a crazy way to customize your website. However, this design idea has been gaining traction and there are many websites that have this. It is a great way of communicating with your users and differentiating yourself from the competition.
Of course, when you look at this design idea, you need to ensure that the background is relevant to your website. You also need to use a background that will be of interest to the user. This video experience should not be the background of the whole website, but should be on part of the landing page.
A Lazy Loading Layout
The last actionable design idea you need to consider is a lazy loading layout. This is something that you need to consider if you have a slow loading website. In these cases, your users will often leave your website if it takes too long.
A lazing loading layout can help with this. This layout will help to enhance the loading speed of your website which is important for user experience and search engine optimization. If you want to load these effects, there are a number of plugins that you can use to help you with this. You may be surprised at how a lazing loading layout will help your business.