How to Increase Your Chat Engagement by 67–85% With a Proactive Chat Strategy

On average, Flow’s clients see a 67–85% boost in engaged traffic with live chat.

How? No doubt it’s one of the ingredients in our secret sauce — a well-built proactive chat strategy.

Here are all the ingredients you need to build your own live chat strategy to increase engagement with your traffic.

But First, What is a Proactive Chat Strategy?

Proactive chats are strategic, customized greetings that capture traffic.

In other words, curated messages based on content, traffic, and bounce rates designed for lead generation.

Anybody can install a proactive strategy because they are cost-effective and customizable.

Most of the live chat software programs have proactive features. Thus, if you already have a live chat platform, chances are you can add it to your package without another program. Once you have a proactive chat, it can be tailored to your company’s unique needs. If you’re looking for more conversions, then proactive chats can be sales-oriented. If you need to provide more information, then you can curate your chat around your FAQs.

The key elements that make up a proactive chat strategy are:

1. Target pages: Pages that have high traffic and bounce rates.
2. Conditional statements: Pop-up triggers based on time and user type.
3. Conversation starters: Questions that spark conversation.

Why Proactive Chat Strategies Work

Imagine you’re browsing a site, looking for specific information. What do you do when you don’t find it?

You leave. Back to Google to look for another site that will provide the solutions you’re seeking.

Now imagine you’re pursuing the same web page. Then a chat pops up and asks you, “Are you finding the information you need on this page?”

If you’re not, then you’re much more likely to speak to an agent about your questions.

The same happens to your traffic.

Customized greetings help confused visitors before they realize they need help. Plus, help to convert those that need a few questions cleared up before buying. The end result is a personalized experience that increases retention, revenue, and brand loyalty.

How To Create Your Proactive Chat Strategy

In three easy steps, you can transform your reactive chat into a proactive one:

Step 1: Export Google Analytics

The metrics that matter for proactive chat are:

Your Web Traffic

Traffic helps you see which pages are accessible and which pages are not. A proactive chat on a low-traffic page can increase visits. While a proactive chat on a high-traffic page can retain visitors.

Your Bounce Rates

Bounce rates show the pages that lack engagement with relevant information. Increasing support and providing instant information captures visitors that would otherwise leave.

Step 2: Create Conditional Statements and Greetings

A page’s unique traffic, content, and bounce rates define conditional statements — rules that trigger chat activation — and personalized greetings in a proactive chat.

Setting up your conditional statements and greetings is simple. For each page:

1. Set your conditional statement below the bounce rate.
2. Create a unique greeting based on page info and visitor type.

For example, you want to optimize a product page that has high traffic but a high bounce rate at 20 seconds.

You could program your conditional statement to target new visitors on your page after 10 seconds. Then you could trigger a different greeting when repeating customer visits for 15 seconds.

Next, you need to set your unique greetings.

Take a moment to step in the shoes of your consumers. Go on the web page and skim the information from their perspective. What answers are they looking for? What questions would they ask? For our example, your consumers could have a question about one of your products.

Your greetings could look something like:

• New visitor: “Hi! Do you have any questions about our products?”
• Returning visitor: “Welcome back! Which product can I help you with today?”

Rinse and repeat this process for every page. Make sure to prioritize the pages your marketing efforts drive traffic to, but may experience high bounce rates. Think landing, product, and service pages.

Step 3: Refine Your Proactive Greetings

Once implemented, updating your proactive chats will ensure freshness. To analyze your chat performance data look at:

• The most-triggered conditional statements.
• Google Analytics — traffic and bounce rates.

If the proactive chat is successful, you’ll see a lower bounce rate and higher traffic in Google. You will also be able to see which greetings and triggers produce the most leads.

Related: How to Turn Your Live Chat Data Into Business Intelligence

Repetitive greetings act like chatbots, which discourage engagement — not what you want. Every quarter it’s a great idea to update your greetings to keep your traffic interested. Remember, when you refresh a page or FAQ, your chat needs to reflect the changes too.

Proactive Chat Can Boost Your Engagement!

No matter the business you’re in, there are tons of ways a proactive chat can impact your conversions.

Seriously. The opportunities are endless:

• Raise live chat awareness on your homepage.
• Upsell products in your shop.
• Promote sales on your product pages.
• Reduce cart abandonment at check out.
• Increase brand awareness on your ‘About’ page.
• Help struggling customers on any page.
• Sign up visitors to your newsletters on any page.

No matter what, a proactive chat can create a first-class experience for everybody.

Remember these best practices when you design yours:

• All pages need a proactive chat except ‘Terms of Service’ and ‘Privacy Policy.’
• Focus on pages with high traffic and bounce rates.
• Every page needs a custom greeting — put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
• Create different greetings for new and returning traffic.
• Trigger your chats lower than the page’s bounce rate.
• Fine-tune and update your greetings from time to time.

At any point, if you need help, we’re here to help you with practical advice for your unique needs. Hop on a chat or contact us at any time!

The original article appeared first on my blog. If you enjoyed this please tap the clap button. 👏🏼 Thank you!