3 Website Engagement Tools To Improve Your Customers’ Experiences
Article Originally Published on Nextiva by Cameron Johnson
Are you struggling to keep visitors engaged on your site?
This is a common problem that every business has to face. We all want our customers to have an amazing experience whenever they interact with our business, and this is especially true on a website.
That’s because we know that online engagement leads to higher customer satisfaction and increased sales.
As much as we all want to improve engagement, though, it’s hard to know what aspects of your site may be hindering the user experience (UX). Luckily, there are tools to help with this.
We’ve tested dozens of website engagement tools on the market and have narrowed it down to three that will improve your UX. Each tool is intended to either get you engaging with customers directly or give you insight on what your visitors need.
Try these tools for yourself and see how quickly your engagement improves!
Tool #1: Live Chat
Jump on any modern website today, and most likely they have some kind of function where you can chat with a representative in real-time.
Chat isn’t a fad or the ‘trendy thing’ businesses are doing (like Google+ in 2014). It’s here to stay.
In fact, live chat is expected to grow by as much as 87% over the next year.
But why is everybody jumping on board?
Because it’s all about convenience! Customers want to engage with brands on their time. They want answers NOW.
One study actually found that 79% of customers prefer live chat over other types of engagement because of the immediacy it provides.
Think about it for a second. The faster a customer gets an answer, the more likely they are to make a purchase. The longer you wait, the more time they have to explore other options or second guess themselves.
But don’t just take my word for it. According to a study conducted by FurstPerson, 77% of customers said they wouldn’t purchase a product online without live chat software support.
Nowadays chat has clearly become a website engagement tool that customers not only appreciate but expect.
Hopefully you’re already reaping the rewards of using a chat tool, but if not then here’s the solution we recommend.
Recommended Tool: Nextiva Chat
Nextiva Chat is the perfect solution for businesses that want to create amazing customer experiences. Not only is it designed with an easy-to-use interface but also can be customized to fit your business’ needs.
Consider just a few of the many features offered:
- Availability — You can designate business hours where customers can message you in real time. Then during your off hours you can continue to capture leads with proactive contact forms.
- Proactive chat — Set specific rules on each page of your site that dictate when a chat pops up. For example, you can have a chat appear after a person has been looking at your prices for more than 30 seconds (indicating they’re having a hard time making a decision).
- Internal chat — Easily collaborate with teammates and managers while speaking with a customer.
- Chat logs — Keep a record of all chats with any customer. This feature is further enhanced with NextOS.
- Support case creation — Create and resolve support issues seamlessly through chat.
Nextiva Chat gives you everything your company needs to engage with customers online and improve the overall experience. Whether you need chat for sales or support, it’s got you covered.
And right now there’s a 30-day free trial. Check it out here.
Tool #2: Visitor Recording Software
The secret to engaging with customers isn’t just talking to them. It’s also creating a positive experience that encourages them to engage with you.
After all, 94% of first impressions are design related.
We’ve all been to websites that have horrible user experiences. Just think of how Amazon looked when it first got started:
The challenge often isn’t knowing if a web page looks good, though. It’s knowing whether or not a page will be engaging enough for readers to take action (whether that be a chat, purchase, or phone call).
That’s why I love visitor recordings.
With recording tools you can actually watch what consumers are doing in real time on your site. Or you can even save these recordings in the cloud to be reviewed later.
Here’s just one example of a visitor recording:
From these recordings you can learn many things like:
- Where on the site customers are disengaging
- What pages/paragraphs customers typically read before they buy
- What they do when your proactive chat appears on their screen
In order to survive we as businesses need to foster engagement and build relationships with customers. With this data we now know where we’re falling short of that mark and what we need to fix.
Recommended Tool: HotJar
I’ve used HotJar for years now and love how easy it is to set up.
Yes you do need to add a bit of javascript to the head of each page, but that’s almost expected with any tool.
Once the code is installed you’re ready to start recording.
What really makes them shine, though, isn’t just their ability to record a visitor’s movements. Its their recordings archive. Once you’ve collected a healthy amount of recordings (which shouldn’t take long if you have any traffic going to your site) you can go into the archive and filter the results.
For example, you could quickly find recordings of anyone who hit your pricing page and then figure out what on the page got them to abandon the transaction.
Tool #3: A/B Testing Software
As you begin chatting with customers and recording their actions you’ll start to gain insights into:
- What they’re looking for but not finding on the site
- What their underlying concerns are
- How satisfied they are with their engagement with you so far
Fortunately if you find that you’re falling short in any one of these areas you can always try something new. That’s where A/B testing comes in.
Let’s say you customers are going to your pricing page, staring at the information for 3–4 minutes, and then initiating a live chat with you. That probably means you’re either not giving them the all the information they’re looking for or you’re scaring them with your prices.
Simply create a few variations of the pricing page (one with additional information and one without prices), and run them side-by-side in an A/B test. See if you get more chats, sales, etc.
Once again, we want to create an environment where people want to engage and move down the funnel. The only way to do that is to listen to your customers and then try to create a better experience that fits their needs.
Recommended Tool: Visual Website Optimizer
Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is one of many A/B testing solutions on the market. I’ll be honest in that you can’t go wrong with most of the tools out there, but what I like about VWO is its drag-and-drop capabilities.
The tool makes it easy to change anything on the page. Simply click on any element and drag it to where you want it to be placed.
You can also run separate tests on different devices. So if you feel like you should be getting better engagement on mobile, try A/B testing two identical pages with different proactive chat rules. That way you can see which chat rules create the most engagement.
Conclusion
Creating better engagement with customers is easy if you have the right tools in place.
While there are dozens of tools out there to help with this, these three will give you everything you need (and then some) to build truly engaging experiences online.
For more information about how to develop amazing customer relationships online and off visit https://www.nextiva.com/why-nextiva/nextos-technology.html.
