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A 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 and communicate with visitors through their website or blog and wanted to share our findings with you. Without a doubt, Woopra’s Live Chat is changing how people connect through their websites with visitors.

The Woopra Live Chat is a feature built into the Woopra Desktop Client. While the conversation is only one way, currently, it’s amazing how creative users have become in connecting with their visitors, breaking down the walls. We’re working on making it two way, so the visitor can initiate the chat from their direction, not just from the webmaster to the visitor.

To use the Woopra Live Chat, click Start a Conversation on the Live panel with any visitor. It pops up a small window asking the visitor if they would like to accept or deny the live chat. If they accept, that window is replaced with a small dialog browser window and the two of you can chat. 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.

Currently, the Woopra Live Chat is one way, from the webmaster to the visitor. We’re working on adding a widget to initiate conversations from your website.

How Do You Use the Woopra Live Chat?

Here are some of the things people have been saying about using the Woopra Live Chat to give you an idea about how easy and fun it can be, as well as useful.

Casyd1020 said:

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.

Woopra’s Live Chat brings people together in interesting ways, since it is just one of many different ways to communicate in real time. @airliarsim (Eleanor Reedokm) tweeted:

Sitting across from me in Holland is @ernohannink talking to @davemoyer in Denver via Woopra while I GTalk with Dave, all live. Too funny!!

Patrick Nelson of UnderDesign uses it for 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.

Love the Cool reviewed Woopra and described the chat this way:

…heard about Woopra on TWiT’s Net@Night and couldn’t wait to use. Real-time analytics that allow you to micro track what’s happening on your blog…Not just that, you can even interact with users, asking them what the hell they think they’re doing on your site – just kidding about the last part, but you can interact, and that does feel slightly creepy to me, but whatever, more features the better. Just try to think of a non-creepy way to use it.

We worried, too, about the “creepy” aspect of the Live Chat, but we found that few people get resistance or resentment from being approached. We have many reports of members getting surprised and delighted responses from those who respond. Some report few responses, which could be due to the visitor leaving the site, closing the page, the chat popup being buried behind windows, or missed for many other reasons. We’re working on ways of improving the first impression, thus the connection rates.

We like how this review by JotLab explained it:

Imagine that you can tag a particular visitor and track their behaviour as they navigate through your site. Picture yourself having the ability to even chat with the end user as you watch them loop endlessly through your site, potentially lost. With Woopra, you can be the online sales assistant that you never thought you could be!

With more and more people paying attention and enjoying live chat sessions through Woopra, expect the response rate to go up.

In a review of Woopra, Website Magazine wrote that they like the idea of improving sales with the chat:

Another interesting feature is a built-in chat tool, which allows users to initiate popup messages to website visitors and actually talk to them – a terrific way to keep visitors moving along the sales funnel.

Michael Beaton knows exactly how the sales funnel works:

The chat function is sweet. I’m going to work with my retail clients marketing and customer service agents. ID rules of engagement!

@techburgh used Woopra to help him track down site spammers, using the Live Chat feature to contact them directly, a novel approach to an ongoing problem for many bloggers and webmasters:

I’ve watched spammers in woopra and messaged them. All based out of the US.

When asked if this approach made a difference, he replied that it didn’t stop them, but the time spent tracking them helped him to consider other alternatives to blocking their access.

Web Analytics World liked the live chat feature because Google doesn’t have it and…

[Woopra] has real time visitor analysis (creepy but great – you can see exactly which source your visitor comes from, the page they are on, and their path around your site etc), and secondly, they offer a great built in chat tool, that allows you to popup messages to your website visitors and actually talk to them – this is great for generating real time feedback or to offer help.

Got nothing better to do? Why not chat up visitors late at night? v6tc tweeted:

Woopra is where it’s at. I get to kill boredom by harassing visitors on my site. How else would I kill boredom at 4am?

The Impact of the Real-time Live Conversation

When Joseph Keith of SEO Hard Truth wrote “Stay Connected with your Customers REAL-TIME!!! You must Check This Out…Even Live Chat!!!,” he was waiting for visitors when Woopra stopped in to check out his review of our service. Within seconds of arrival, I got a request for a live chat and agreed.

In his review, he talked about how important features like the Live Chat is for feedback:

With this analytics program it allows you to place an Ad, start a PPC campaign or tweet, and get live results. This allows you to make adjustment to Ads, Landing Pages, Keywords, Tweets, etc. in real-time so no budget is waited on useless campaigns…marketing departments can use this program to keep track and interact with repeat visitors, tag them and even chat with them live.

How important is feedback? Would you like to provide instant information and support?

Providing feedback, valuable information and support to your customers is crucial. Why wait until the next day to find out what your customers are looking for? This program allows you to see when your customers are stuck checking out or have a problem navigating through your site. It also provides a solution…Live Chat. All you have to do is click the live chat and answer their questions or help them complete a purchase.

We’re often asked why we included the Live Chat feature. Primarily, it was a challenge to see if we could, but more importantly, Woopra is about real-time information, actionable information you can use now. Why stop at the numbers? Why not engage directly with your visitors? We wanted to see how close we could get to breaking the barrier between the visitor and the webmaster. The Live Chat breaks down the walls.

Have you tried our Live Chat feature? What has been your experience?