How to allow clients to chat with you through your website.

[Dominic Maricic]

This is more of a tip to increase your sales that improve rankings. Several inspectors have asked me in the past (Gerry Beaumont asked today which moved me to finally write something up) on how to add chat to their website. There are many different methods of doing this, but one that I feel is the best for inspectors.

Why add chat to your website? Lets imagine the casual client who is looking over multiple websites for an inspector, not sure who they are going to choose. Yes, all have a phone number to call, so the client writes down the phone numbers planning to call a few once they narrow down their choices. Then they come across a site with a box on the front page of their site that says 'chat with this inspector live!' Now you've created a way to create an instant connection with a client from the comfort of your computer.

What happens if you're not at your computer? Well, there's two options. The first is that the system will simply say you're offline and they are welcome to leave a message (which is also nice, I'd have the system say if I'm off performing an inspection or something). The second is if you have a phone that supports any chat protocol such as MSN,AIM,ICQ,Google Chat,Jabber,Yahoo Messenger, etc, the message can be forwarded to your phone!

So, how do you do this? Go to http://www.plugoo.com/ . Register and enter the info requested and you will be given code to add to your site. If you're using our hosting service then create a block and you can add the chat to one of the side bars of your site, or add it to a new page. You can choose any of the chat systems mentioned above.

What happens when someone requests a chat? The message goes directly to your normal chat program open on your desktop.

Many phones today like the blackberry's, iPhones, treo's, etc can support live chat via the systems above, allowing you to stay in touch with users on your website all day.