How Do You Use the Woopra Live Chat?
We’ve been working hard on totally rebuilding the Woopra Live Chat feature for the next version. During this time, the Live Chat has not been working for those of you testing the release candidates, which has prompted a lot of pleas for its quick return to service.
The Woopra Live Chat was one of the first website instant chat programs that allowed the webmaster to see the visitor’s movements through the site and have a conversation with them live through the Woopra desktop application without installation or jumping through any hoops. All they had to do was agree to chat and the chat box would open.
For us, it was exciting to break down the final barrier between the author and the visitor. Webmasters and bloggers could respond immediately, offering customer service options or work towards building a relationship.
When we first introduced the Woopra Live Chat, a lot of people were nervous, afraid of invasion of privacy and annoying visitors, but there was also a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.
We’ve been amazed at how people have been embracing the live chat. Some are holding contests. They announce the contest on Twitter and their blog, and use the Live Chat feature as part of the content (chat with me live!) and hand out the awards. Many are using it for customer service, helping visitors find their way through the site’s content or answering questions about their orders or troubleshooting needs. Others are using it to educate and consult with clients.
How do you use it? If you have been using the Woopra Live Chat, how have you been using it? Why is it important to your site? And for those of you waiting to try it, why do you want to use it? We’d love to know.
I use it every now and then BUT it would be a tremendous value add if we could add a chat now button on the site that would pop up in the application.
To allow them to chat to us when they feel the need.
This is almost as important as the stats. To me that is.
I never use this feature, any one can help me, how to use Woopra Live Chat?
How Do You Use the Woopra Live Chat? = i tryed to use it..many times.. but. it does not work =((
could u make a movie on youtube how it’s work..and put comments…why it doesnot work some times
I would LOVE to implement the live chat feature on my site.
However, I am looking for a good metric to allow me to judge the moment that my sales team should initiate contact.
Currently, just using length of visit doesn’t seem to be effective, because the visitor could be deep into reading the content of the page and a pop-up window could be seen as an intrusion into their browsing experience.
If there were a way to accurately judge the true nature of the visit, then the sales staff could make the decision of whether to initiate a conversation or not.
Perhaps a function could be built that would alert us if a visitor was repetitively viewing a particular page; say “widget123″. In the case of e-commerce, this would be equivalent to watching a customer stare at, or come back to a particular product on a shelf. If this function did get implemented, I would like to see a filter option so that pages like ‘cart’ could be removed from the alert (customers may view the cart more than once, and I don’t need to necessarily know about it). This would allow my team to help drive the customer to the cart with the right items by helping to make product add-to cart decisions. From there, I would just use the regular session information in Woopra to watch for hang-ups in the conversion process and if need be, initiate another chat session.
It’s great to have live chat, but unless it happens at the right moment it’s annoying to potential customers.
It would also be nice to know if sessions were held in the past with that visitor; including a log of the visited pages- all on one split screen. Chat on the top, and session info on the bottom with an option to view past, or current activity; resizable of course.
..just an idea.
Lorelle,
I tried launching a chat request with any of my visitors and it does not work on both of my sites using 1.2 and the 1.3RC. Has this been enabled?
Again, for those of you curious about how the chat will work when it is working again, it is initiated from the Live Panel. Each visitor section displays a link called Start a Conversation. We will be announcing it’s activiation when the new version becomes available. Until then, I’m sorry that it isn’t working for everyone using Woopra 1.2.
The Woopra Live Chat Feature is a great one. It’s best use by far is in the customer service range. You can use the live tracking feature to watch users navigate your website. When someone has trouble finding a piece of content and you can see them moving around looking you can easily contact them and ask if they need assistance finding anything. It also helps some curiosity when you see a user from a far off country accessing your website and you’d really like to know more about them.
When it used to work in the early beta phases, we used to use it during focus groups and usability testing – 10 to 12 users in a room testing a new web app or web site; we could monitor their activity and their movements via Woopra and then jump in and ask them questions about their activity such as “Why did you click that particular link?”, “What made you go for that menu item” and so on.
We also found it useful to be able to leap in at the exact time that somebody would be having difficulty – if they remained on a page for more than a predetermined period of time, e.g., 10 seconds, we could ask them if they were having trouble and, if they were, exactly what that problem was. This produced far better results than the old way which involved asking participants why they struggled with a particular page anywhere between 15 minutes and 3 days AFTER the session. People’s memories often are not good and the answers we used to receive rarely matched up with what we saw. Being able to catch them “in the moment”, as it were, produced some fascinating insights into usability and people’s behaviour on the sites and apps we were testing.
[...] un bug fixing — che però svolge egregiamente il suo lavoro. Prossimamente sarà integrata anche una chat di cui ignoro [...]
It doesn’t work as far as I can see. I tried it with someone else on my site at another location. I typed in “Hello” into the “start a conversation” box – the smaller window at the bottom – and nothing happened at the other end. The client refreshed: still nothing. What’s the secret?
@Dominic: As stated in the article, the Live Chat does not currently work. It’s been disabled in order for us to work on upgrading and improving it’s features. Thanks for your patience.
The question is: If you had it, how would you use it?
I would also like to see a feature that would allow the user to initiate a chat. A new way to show the chat with new themes would also be appreciated. Better yet, make a full Javascript API for the chat that would allow me and the rest of the community to build plugins and themes.
Hmm, it looks like you changed the chat slightly. It works from the web interface again, but with a new window. Unfortunately, the chat is still too buggy and way too slow to be practical.
I was able to use the woopra Chat via the woopra.com website. It helped the sales team to communicate to the specific customers that appears to trend to be indecisive. We look forward to using it to help suggest sale on products
Actually the live chat feature is not working for us at the moment. Hopefully with the next update it will. :)
Keep up the good work guys.
My website is a fan/help site for a gaming company. We provide game guides, tips and strategies and with the use of live chat, I hope I will be able provide more in-depth and personally focused game help to visitors to my site.
we really would like the click to chat button in our site, any news on that matter,
thanks, woopra is the best analytic tool we knew.
Will the chat have a feature to create a link on the website for the visitor to be able to contact the site operators?
Will the live chat feature a way for the end-user of the site to contact the people on the back end? Like if a customer has a question will we be able to put a link on every page of the site for them to be able to ask us a question
The features of the new Live Chat feature will be announced soon. In the past, it was accessible via a link from within the Woopra Desktop Client on the Live Panel view of individual visitors. It popped up a small window within the visitor’s browser inviting them to chat. There was no website button.
We’re working on getting the initiation for chatting through Woopra via the desktop and the website, along with a lot of other custom features. Thanks for your patience while we work on improving it for you.
And thanks to everyone for your feedback on how you use the Live Chat. It helps us better understand how to improve it.
[...] input on how you would like the new version of the Woopra chat to look like and work, check out How Do You Use the Woopra Live Chat? We asked Woopra members who have been using or look forward to using the chat feature about how [...]
I’m currently using Woopra for a number of web sites that I manage the analytics for. I used Woopra Live Chat to talk to visitors and help them find what they were looking for. But I’m very excited about how Live Chat will enhance what we’re doing on a new website http://www.thebeop.com which is for a band from the future and features a novel 3D navigation system. Visitors to the Beop! are so taken a back by the site’s lack of convention that they have lots of questions (like WTF!). Woopra Live Chat gives us a new way to interact with a new generation of web visitors or rather ‘our audience’. Shake On!
@Lorelle Any ideas as to when can we expect the release of the next version? We are looking at implementing the chat function on our sites, to inquire if our visitors have any queries on the page they are viewing or if perhaps we could send them further information. This is a great addition and can definitely add to customer service and satisfaction!
I realize live chat is not currently enabled, but even when it was, that wasn’t clear. If you try to talk with a site visitor, they may not wish to be bothered. Also, there browser version or settings may have prevented the chat window from appearing. It would be great to get some kind of feedback: ie. Chat window appeared, and visitor closed it. Chat window is minimized. Chat window did not appear. Chat window hidden behind window. Mouse hovered over chat window for a moment…. That kind of thing. I have never successfully had a chat, but I have tried many times.
Other features I would like. Since chat has never worked for me, some of these may already exist?
- A single chat window that stays around while the visitor moves from page to page on the site.
- Visitor can initiate chat button with status of webmaster/customer service.
- Change status to offline while continuing chat with chats already ongoing.
- IRC type chat window/iframe so visitors can see ongoing chats with other visitors. Private chat should still be available.
- chat with google talk or other mainstream tools. This can allow chat when not using woopra.
- allow chat from multiple customer service (CS) people at same time.
- allow chat forwarding to other CS people.
- email chat transcript to visitor.
- chat window in woopra should reflect that visitor has left site.
- boilerplate phrases and sentences to aid the CS person
- allow redirect of visitor, with or without chat accepted, to page of choice by CS person
Woopra features that would help:
- differentiate between windows with focus or other status like hitten tabs
- report mouse or page movement (I have had pages sit on live for hours)
- report multiple windows of site open simultaniously
- provide the same live visitor history to any visitor record in the woopra search results
- report live count of visit length
-Peter
Guys just a quick note to say you’re doing great work.
As a website developer I’m looking forward to being able to combine Woopra tracking, Call to Chat/ Start a Conversation and video.
It’s through this combination we finally have a user/ business experience very similar to a customer walking into a retail store – being able to initially meet & greet, then see the customer browse, then at the right time service.
Eagerly looking forward to the new chat function and whether we can also push a link through.
Customers on our site are mostly our own dealers, these people often find a product that is not on stock. As our website itself can’t find the right replacement we usually track the custoemr via woopra.
If we’d be able to directly use the live chat and help the customer out on his choise, that would be a major upgrade.
Also, as gearspring says: Having some heat overview of the website in Woopra, would be a nice addition.
[...] recently asked how you use the Woopra live chat and the feedback has been amazing and fascinating. We’d love to know more as that will help [...]
Congratulations, I’m using Woopra 1.3.1 and it seems to work just great. However, I would like the to have the chance to preset chat invitation message and buttons in other languages (spanish) and to change that window size (I think is too big).
hello i found bug:
FireFox – chat working 100%
Opera – some times buggy
IE – some times does not open chat
MAXTHON 2.5 (IE tuning) – does not working =(
Great details. Thank you. We’re aware of the issue with IE8, though we haven’t had reports on Maxthon. Would love more details in the forums to help us figure out what’s going on with that system. Thank you.
I would like it that above “Webmaster” I can use a different name. Currently this is using my login username for Woopra. I dont want people to see that. looks unprofessional, also.
We’ve taken all of your feedback and put it into a roadmap for the Woopra Live Chat. We’ve now added the ability to change the “name” and “title” and even the colors, and have more features on their way. Thanks and keep the feedback coming!
[...] recently asked our Members to tell us about how they use the Woopra Live Chat. We were stunned at how popular this feature is for Woopra Members! The Woopra Live Chat requires [...]
[...] Woopra Live Chat has proven more popular than we ever anticipated, breaking the barrier on the web between visitor and webmaster or blogger. [...]
It looks like the chat is reactive now too – but does anyone know how to actually implement the “click to chat” – or know where the code for the button is ?
http://www.woopra.com/features/
The Click to Chat “button” is on the Woopra Desktop Client. In the Live visitor view, you will see it near their name. It works for most browsers, though there are problems with IE 8. Currently, there is no chat option to install on a website. That option will soon be available to paid plans.
Any specific timeframe for this (or loose timeframe)?
I guess I am asking you to define “soon”.
Timeframe for what? The Woopra Live Chat to work? It’s working for the majority of our users. We’re working on an update in the next few weeks for newly updated browsers. The “inbound/outbound” chat and Widgets? Those will be here later, as we are working on a lot of feature upgrades to Woopra to release at the end of the month long out-of-beta-testing phase.
Update
The Woopra Live Chat is working and active. To customize the chat window look and feel, and even add an avatar, go to the Woopra Members Area > Chat Settings. For more information on using and customizing the Woopra Live Chat, see the FAQ on the Live Chat feature.
[...] few months ago, we asked our members how they use the Woopra Live Chat. Since then, we’ve been digging into how our Live Chat feature is changing how people connect [...]
Gotta say that I don’t think live chat is working on the Macintosh Client I have been been trying for quite some time. They get the initial message but the client never really connects after that.
I saw your question in the Woopra Forums and responded there. The Woopra Live Chat does work for almost all operating systems and web browsers. Please see my response there. Thanks.