Hacking your business growth to accelerate and get it to the next level will involve the use of growth strategies. As a business owner, one need to ask what kind of business growth is intended.

There are at least two kinds of business growth: financial growth and market growth. Most of the time, the two are inter-related, however, one need not be the direct effect of the other in all cases.

Also, market growth may come in two types: 1) Scalability, and 2) New Business. Both relate to business expansion and touch base with buyers and users. Scalability refers to the growth in market scale such as adding more countries, customers or contact centers while new business often pertains to getting into a new market or new business units. You need to be able to identify what sort of market growth you are aiming for in order to discern what growth strategy is most feasible.

But the fact remains that whatever growth strategies are to be applied, customer support and communication is central to driving the success of market growth.

Hacking Business Growth with Live Chat

This Ingenious Growth Hack

A customer-focused live chat widget on your online business website is an ingenious market growth for 3 main reasons:

1. It provides an easy, convenient point of instant contact between consumers and your business. With just a single click, online shoppers browsing product items or services can immediately start a conversation with you or a customer service agent from your team right on the page with the item they are viewing.

2. Adding live chat to your eCommerce site takes less than 5 minutes. Once the widget code is placed on the backend of the site, the customer-facing live chat widget will instantly appear. You or your live chat agents can login on the web based dashboard through your live chat provider’s website and appear online to shoppers ready for a chat regarding their questions, inquiries, request for assistance and personalized information.

3. Today’s shoppers love instant communication – more so when they are able to start a conversation without any additional effort. It’s a customer service homerun as much as a sales homerun. By placing a constantly available live chat person on your site, obstacles in the sales path are cleverly destroyed.

Chat is the most preferred communication method by most of today’s shoppers because they can multi-task and their general questions that come off the top of their heads get answered right there and then. This eliminates waiting times, doubts, and discouraging steps that could hamper that sale.

Growing More with Live Chat

One of the biggest issues of small business expansion that tends to fall by the wayside is good customer service. “As workload increases tremendously, so does the feeling of being overwhelmed,” laments many a business owner.

To cope with the influx of customers in need of support, even larger companies and corporations have resorted to live chat. Why think it’s a poor fit for a scaled up small business?

Live chat is agile and has the greatest impact on communication. Why choose social networks when you can get customers to communicate right on the page without switching to another screen that detours from the sales path? Why choose phone support when customers need to navigate away from your item, dial and wait and get frustrated? Why choose email when, again, they would wait for a reply?

Growing New Business with Live Chat

Launching a new product line? Or an extension of your services?

New offerings attract a new range of clients and buyers too! Once you’ve rolled out new stuff in the frontlines, be ready for the incoming avalanche of interested shoppers. Obviously, you’d have to spend a considerable amount of time explaining these new products and services to consumers. Aside from an FAQ section, email and social media marketing promoting and explaining your new offerings online, a live chat feature on your site can catch those inquiries right when customers are showing interest.

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Leaders in customer service have acknowledged that live chat has evolved to be an important channel for providing the best customer experience. What seems to be a perceived delay in adoption of live chat by enterprises and companies stems from the lack of a presentation of its financial benefit, that is, the cost effectiveness of live chat, compared to traditional voice or phone support and e-mail.

It what way can you save costs by using live chat for business instead of traditional voice and email support?

Cost savings related to labor, hiring, training, management and technology can be made through Offerchat live chat because of a combination of two factors: live chat software and agent outsourcing.

Concurrency saves additional labor cost.

Perhaps the most obvious costs advantage that’s labor-related is the fact that chat agents can handle multiple customer interactions at once in contrast with voice support.

Concurrency, as it is called in the customer service industry, means the same volume of customer contacts can be handled by fewer agents.

With phone support, an agent can handle only one interaction whereas live chat agents can attend to 1-4 individuals simultaneously. This saves the business labor expenses (employee salaries) as, depending on their size and volume of clients or users, they would need fewer agents.

Live chat technology costs less.

A live chat platform like Offerchat is cloud-based and less expensive -- unlike voice-based infrastructure which is typically more complicated and has to be deployed physically which, in turn, requires upfront investment costs. Add to the equation ongoing maintenance costs and it’s easy to dramatically tip the weighing scale to one side.

Even when a company adapts VoIP systems, the peripherals needed for voice support will still affect costs.

In contrast, a communication channel such as live chat with a technology that requires almost zero physical infrastructure other than the already existing office computer and with a significantly minimal upfront cost for the tool itself, businesses can scrimp on their budget without sacrificing quality of support.

Chat reduces hiring costs.

Most startups and fledgling small businesses are staffed by only a handful of people necessary for operations. However, once the business gains enough traction and consumers start to flock, general support demands will start rising too.

The need for more people in the team to cover the frontlines will be inevitable as you get traction. While a live chat agent hiring process should consider chat-centered skills aside from soft, customer service skills, the cost likely remains the same compared to hiring voice and email support agents.

But the time and the money spend in vetting applicants can be too costly. It can also lead you away from your core responsibilities as the owner. Most businesses nowadays, though, have put their trust in outsourcing customer support.

Chat reduces training and management costs.

The future onboarding of live chat outsourcing involves business managers maintaining a knowledge reservoir of sorts for customer service agents to keep tab with. This is a lot cheaper than hiring a separate product trainer and paying for full-time salaries and benefits.

For small to medium-sized businesses, management can look over core operations without having a separate branch handling support. Because the live chat platform is cloud-based and pretty straightforward, with much of the communication happening via written word exchanges in real time, the system is compact and easy to manage.

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Websites using live chat as customer support tool have been increasing in numbers these past two years. Mostly seen on ecommerce sites, online retail stores and even travel agencies, live chat is a welcome addition to the set of tools that your customer service can utilize to bring convenience to online shoppers.

But why live chat and not phone support or emails?

Live chat support is one click away to talking to someone who knows about the product customers want to buy. Knowing that there is a person nearby who can assist them empowers them as buyers, as important individuals with needs that require immediate attention to.

Here is a list of reasons why live chat empowers your customers and support your sales funnel.

1. Give shoppers confidence that they will be entertained

Do you know that feeling when you walk in a store and there’s no one behind the counter to welcome you? That’s how it feels like when someone visits an online shop and don’t see or feel any human presence at all, which deters them from buying, which also means a lost sale for you.

With the live chat support just within reach, they know that there is someone available should they have questions or are stuck on a particular sales page because of technical errors.

2. Give them a chance to multitask while on the site

Online shoppers love to visit several pages at one time especially when they are in the selection phase. And they hate being interrupted just to give your customer reps a call for some small inquiry. It’s either the answer is right in front of them or you have someone available on chat.

Using live chat help is a convenient way for them to browse your site for items while chatting with your sales agent at the same time. Quick answers mean quick sales especially for the busy shoppers.

3. Empower the shy shoppers or those with aversion to talking on the phone

Some shoppers are either lazy to give a call or too shy to talk to customer support over the phone. They are most commonly the ones who’d rather jump to another retailer to find what they need rather than call support.

Live chat eliminates that hesitation from these types of buyers. With online chat support, shoppers know that they need not wait for days to have their simple question answered nor do they have to suffer transferred calls.

4. Provide great shopping experience they’ll likely repeat.

Nothing gives someone that awesome feeling when they know they matter – their questions and problems matter to you, the seller. It’s the value in the experience that encourages buyers to trust a brand will take care of them the way they wanted to be taken care of.

Live chat offers immediate response to buyer needs, which make them feel cared for and valued. Even I’d go for great and fast customer service anytime.

Giving shoppers the ability to directly interact with who’s behind the chatter’s seat empowers them because they know that their needs, questions or feedback will be addressed well in real-time.

None of the emails to wait out an incorrect or insufficient answer, no hold calls or delayed response to simple inquiries, just plain one-to-one conversation with a sales agent behind an online live chat tool like Offerchat.

What do you think of live chat for customer service? Have you tried one on your website and how did it go for you and your sales?

Share your experience with us and with our regular readers through the comment section below.

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How well do you know your customers? Do you even know who they are or why they want your service? It’s an obvious nah! if you’re still rambling about high bounce rate or low conversions.

If you’re not a regular reader at Offerchat or it’s your first time here, then you missed quite a lot in the “conversion-boosting” department. No worries, we’re not going anywhere. Try to poke around for information you need but do that right after you read this ‘un right here.

Let’s get this on…

What’s the biggest problem of website owners or eCommerce/retail online stores?

Low conversions? Too obvious of an answer and too broad to pinpoint. So what is it? Anyone?

It’s not knowing who’s been in and out their stores or understanding why visitors leave and don’t buy. When you can’t see your visitors much less talk to them, you’ll never know what they want or be able to help them when they can’t seem to find something you claimed to have for sale.

And we all know…unsatisfied customers = no sales (nada)

So, like any brick-and-mortar store, you’d be a fool to think that all the people who come in and look around your store will ultimately buy.

So what you got to do? Simple, don’t play guessing games instead check out these 5 website conversion optimization tools highly recommended by web analysts.

Web (Google) Analytics

It would be madness to setup an ecommerce website or any money making site for that matter without Google Analytics. I just couldn’t imagine it. Can you?

Google analytics is the ultimate free web tool that can help you understand the status of your website most significantly the visitors’ side.

Learn about your visitors by checking up on their demographics, platforms they came from, particular exit pages, links they clicked on… oh and how long they stayed on specific pages.

You can also use Piwik, Clicky and other web analytic tools available online (but I place my bets on GA ‘coz it’s the best).

Spend more time on your web analytics rather than complain about why people don’t buy.

Surveys & Interviews

Your clients have all the answers, at least for the most part. Please do remember that the next time you want to change something on your website for the hope of boosting your sales. Surveys and one-to-one interviews help you get unbiased feedback on your website and gain an insight on what visitors/clients like, do not like and the difficulties they encounter during their visit.

SurveyMonkey is the best-recommended tool when you need answers to marketing questions that only your visitors can provide. It also gives you a full-on intelligent insight on survey results through its analytic tool.

Sample questions:

- How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

- In the past six months, have you criticized or spoken highly of [Company Name] to a friend, colleague, or family member? If so, please give details.

- If you could have us create something just for you, what would it be?

- What other products or services should we offer?

- Which other options did you consider before choosing our product or service?

Live Chat Support

What else do you need to better understand your visitors? Looking at movements (upward and downward slope of site visits) on your Google analytics or taking on a handful of survey answers to interpret are not enough to cover the base of understanding your client needs.

How about the shy types who wouldn’t call or don’t want to be bothered by a full-page survey form?

Use live chat support to talk to your clients! Do proactive chats and initiate a conversation. Sometimes these types of clients need quite a bit of squeezing to make them bleed.

This probably sounds biased but Offerchat is making quite a name for itself in the live chat industry with its forever-free chat widget that takes less than one minute to install.

What most live chat support tools offer?

- Online sales person manning your site (if you can manage to have a 24-hour chat agent)

- Track real-time visits and initiate chats

- Know which pages visitors are currently browsing

- Maximize site visits through chat triggers

- And more…

Heat Maps

If you want to sorta stalk your visitors and follow what and where they click on your website, a heat map tool is what you’ll need.

With heat maps such as ClickTale (in-page web analytics) or CrazyEgg, you can easily visualize what your visitors do while on your site, what pages they visit, what links they click on, how far down they scroll, and a host of other visitor-activity tracking features.

Visualizing what visitors commonly do on your website can give you an insight on which parts of your website/page need to be improved and what information they find most useful.

It feels creepy to spy on someone’s activity but it’s a handy tool to have around.

Usability Test

See your site visitor in action through usability testing. Let’s get this out of the way first, usability test is not a tool. It’s your job, your initiative to learn more of your client in the most personal way.

In fact, it’s safe to say that it is a combination of a survey and heat map of some sort.

What’s the flow?

First, you hand them a survey sheet (online pop-up survey request) to single out qualified prospects for your usability test.

Second, you invite them to do a usability test, which most often requires screen sharing so you can view their browsing activity.

Third, you interview them however you like via phone or in person while they move around your website. It might not be chat but there is that element of one-to-one communication going on, just like live chat.

These five website conversion optimization tools are best utilized side by side in maximizing site visits to conversions. Live chat, surveys, interviews, heat maps and analytics are must-haves of any eCommerce site owner who wants to optimize sales.

Remember, what matters is your clients’ perception of the website, whether it provides them what they want, not what you assume they want.

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An online chat widget on your professional website, eCommerce site or company website hugely ups interaction with visitors. It puts a real human being available at moments when visitors want to ask a unique inquiry or obtain information not easily obvious for them.

It can be easily said that live chat can increase sales and conversion rates due to this nifty, real-time interaction. However, it is far from skin-deep. Here are some unexpected ways online live chat can help a small business like yours:

Online chat for real time feedback

You can place a message form in your Contact Us page, but if I’m viewing your page right now nothing beats the lure of sharing what’s on my mind right there and then -- especially if I see somebody from your company online with me!

Gathering feedback from users and the general audience is an essential part of data gathering strategy done by many big and small businesses to help them operate effectively, make decisions, reduce risks, and serve customers and/or users.

Enhances your website

Entrepreneurs should place value to design. Marketing on the web is all about creating an outstanding impression (not an illusion, mind you!) to your online shoppers. Eliminate customer confusion as much as possible and present products and services in a way that will influence customers to having a positive perception of your business.

To do this, your website should not only look professional but also exude the impression that it is a labor of love and quality. It’s caring about things down to the smallest details of the presentation. On the subject of influence: no other communication channel reassures and influences visiting online consumers than finding your real presence available for a quick chat on your site.

Proactively attend to customer needs

The live chat back end control panel similar to Offerchat performs functions beyond aesthetics: it is a real-time monitoring system for visitors in your site.

A business owner and any customer service members on duty can view what page a visitor is viewing, as well as the time spent on the page. If a visitor is taking too long on a certain page in the checkout process, you can jump in and offer assistance. The live chat widget facing the user on your site will get your chat message. You can also set chat triggers with time and page conditions to automatically send proactive chat messages.

Time-saving, cost-reducing customer support tool

For many people, time is the more valuable currency. Revolutionize the way you do pre- and post- sales customer service by offering your e-commerce site visitors and potential buyers the easier, faster way to get personalized assistance. The wait times for email or phone support can be ridiculous for most customers. Social media interaction can feel like a hit-or-miss. On the contrary, live chat starts the conversation right here, right now.

For you, the business owner, live chat support doesn’t take much time to set up. You can have a live chat widget appear on your website in under 5 minutes while spending next to nothing. Customizing to fit the look, the feel and the language of the widget to match your site and engage your audience better can be done in 3 minutes tops. Compare the time and the cost you’d spend with setting up a phone service or email system and you’ll see live chat makes for an awesome customer support!

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Every week the Offerchat team scours the web in search of top content for online retailers and Saas companies. Here is a list of this week’s top posts from the eCommerce and conversion spheres to help you build and grow your online business.

21 Ways You’re Screwing Up Your Landing Pages by Peep Kaja

This is a killer post that kept us awake for a night. The last thing a web entrepreneur want is to screw up the landing pages where milk and honey should flow. Scan these 21 bad practices that disrupt the earning flow in your landing pages to do a quick diagnosis of your money portals. Tip: Don’t forget to open your landing pages and check off each item as you read through.

The declining profitability of Google Adwords by Andy Brice

Ah, Google Adwords. Every single one of us, at one point, have been in a love-hate relationship with this b**ch Google Adwords. We love how Andy Brice examines why so many hearts are broken by Adwords and why so many of us are having major doubts on taking her back.

How to Create a Profitable Google Adwords Campaign (from scratch) by Kissmetrics

The next day, we found out how to kiss and make up with Google Adwords. And this article in Kissmetrics is too irresistable to resist. As I said, love-hate relationship.

10 Reasons to Consder Tumblr for eCommerce Blogging by Paul Chaney

Tumblr has been recently bought by Yahoo! for a hefty... but you know that already, and let’s not rub into our faces what that guy Karp has gotten out of “fuck-yeah’s”. Now it’s time to focus our collective energy on how we can make use of Tumblr to fill our own pockets as well. *wink, wink*

9 eCommerce Experts you Should be Following by Andrew Youdarian

Everybody needs a mentor. Everybody needs inspiration. Take your fill.

Magento and eCommerce Best Practices with Andy Etemadi from EYEMAGINE by Terry Lin

If you have a Magento site, here’s what you should be doing. All insightful podcasts.

How to use Gamification to Increase Sales by Mark Hayes

Mark Hayes shared with us the 10 Rules of eCommerce Marketing and now he’s upping it up with gamification. The subject has been quite hot for some time and in this blog post, we love how he zeroes in on fun and gamification on increasing every business owner’s sales figures.

 

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After seemingly endless months of poring over market research studies and validation details, you’ve taken the plunge in the spirit of #YOLO, kissed your day job goodbye and managed to setup the beginnings of what would be your very own online business empire. Heck, if things go bamm you’ll be retiring to the Caribbean and do nothing but inhale the fresh sea breeze.

You’ve made certain you’re walking those baby feet in the right tracks, so you’ve covered every bit of the basics. “It’s all about the foundation,” muses your stoned startup mentor.

Anybody who’d stray to your site will find it not just compelling (to splurge bucks on) but also a great deal reassuring: there’s a pin bubble in Google maps where your headquarters is, there’s a contact email, and a company/store phone number. Shoppers dig these information. Truth is: you can do better.

Hi, shopper! I’m actually here!

Having 24/7 phone support reassures shoppers that you’re a 100% legitimate company that cares about them after money is exchanged hands. But today’s shoppers are more connected that ever. I mean really, back in the day websites are cool. Websites with real (and working!) contact information were wayyyy cooler. But today, people are more interested if you are actually present online.

That’s why social media interaction became such a huge deal to any marketer promoting a business online.

And if you think social media is the be-all, is-all in building a connection with your buyers, think again. What’s the best place for you to be talking to them? Why, you very own store, of course!

If you’re selling online, and somebody’s looking at an item on your online store, would you really want them to go somewhere else to reach you for any inquiries?

Why favor live chat technology over phone support?

Eliminates sales killer steps

A live chat widget catches all the above in the get-go. Anybody with an inquiry about an item can notice somebody’s online in the shop, and they can instantly chat with you or a customer service representative from your team.

Rather than have them grab the phone or open a Twitter or Facebook app to reach you, potential buyers can get the information they need without these distractions that take them farther away from the checkout page!

Only takes a single click

People browsing the web perform different actions and think differently, more so when they are browsing through a mobile device. In laptops and PCs, your site visitors will have multiple tabs in their browsers that allow them to view multiple pages at once and still keeping all of them. They are also most likely to be shopping leisurely.

When they are browsing through smaller mobile screens they are stuck with the option of only having one experience per screen; thus, the browsing experience becomes linear, not parallel. People on mobile are already “hunting” instead of shopping leisurely, thus their wallets are already open. You don’t want to miss them.

A live chat widget that lets them interact with you with a single click can prevent them from giving up on your item when doubts pop out their minds, and I’m telling you they will, these doubts.

Chat window appears instantly

When you’ve added live chat to your eCommerce store, a non-evading chat window will always be on the ready. Log in to it from the back end control panel as often as you can to make it useful to your online visitors. Or hire someone to cover the essential hours of your business operations.

Unlike waiting in queue for a customer phone support agent to pick up, activating the chat window to find somebody online they can chat with is the sweetest break for online shoppers!

Human presence in your online store

A phone number is what it is: just a number. A very willing buyer would have to step away for a minute from the screen to dial that number. With live chat on your site, your online shop is like a virtual shop with a salesperson behind the counter, ready to help anybody with a question or anybody who can’t find an item.

If your online store is a physical shop down the street, would you let its doors open without salesperson inside?

Key Takeways:

There’s a current war on customer relationship in the eCommerce landscape today. To win against competitors, to have customers buy from you instead of anywhere else, forging relationships is crucial. Online businesses try to be more personable by making it easy for consumers, designing websites with a smooth user flow to increase conversions and sales, and taking to social networks to become reachable.

When buyers are already in your site or online store, make sure they won’t find an silent, empty ghost town.

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