Turning Visitors into Customers Using Olark Live Chat

It's not a new concept at all. I remember a decade ago— testing live chat software and even configuring it for our sales team. I think the Internet is used to using chat, and there's definitely a place for it. It's even one of those things I look for after failed efforts when using a site's 'search'. Seeking a human NOW is sometimes my last effort to communicate— knowing the next step is slogging-through submitting a ticket or sending an email.

My wife (who runs 541 Salon‚ a small gift store in Carmel Indiana) knows a thing or two about retail sales, and she's a genius when it comes to customer service. Lately I've been comparing my wife's retail store to my own website— an interesting thing to think about. Again, it's not a new concept, but once we remember that the website IS a storefront, we can make decisions on how to interact with our visitors.

Visitors arrive in the same way: perhaps by word of mouth, because they searched for a product or service, or maybe they were just passing-by. In her case, she sits at her desk positioned behind retail counters and she greets the visitors as they arrive. In the physical world if there's a tiny bit of interaction with the visitor, you can pick-up on many clues and adapt appropriately. Are they browsing? Are they spying? Are they interested or bored with your selection of products?

In a virtual environment, usually the only way of knowing how a customer reacts to a space, is by keeping a watchful eye on analytics and site statistics. Unless you're a skilled Marketer, like my friend Josh Braaten, sifting through analitics is just that— analytical, and unless you really understand what you're looking at— it can be dry and boring. On Squarespace you can view LIVE stats on your site, and filter hourly/weekly/monthly for any visitor or link, so there is an up-side.

If you're a succesful blogger, then you could get an idea of the visitor's interest by how they comment on your posts, or interact on social networks.

In reality— you have a visitor on your site RIGHT NOW. Who are they? Why are they there? How long will it be before they head for the door? You just don't know!

As a designer, it's my job to identify and solve problems. That's truly the essence of what I do. On a website, the "problem" could be that the visitor didn't know what they were looking for, so they left. If you look-closely, you would see this in your site's analytics— if visitors arrive on a homepage and just don't click on aything, then they probably aren't finding anything they came for. I would solve this problem by adding actionable items and clear site navigation. 

If you write a blog post and knowing it's a great article, you post it on Twitter— when you track and follow clicks, (read my post on how to make custom links and track them by using "Tiny URLS") how long did they stay? Was there anything else of interest that they clicked-on? Did they re-tweet to tell their friends?

Again, using analytics can be difficult and time-consuming. But then what about live chat? 

I've added an OLARK live chat component to squareflair.com to be that human standing in the corner if needed.

To be totally transparent, (as I write this on the very site where future customers will read it) part of my normal method of operation is to filter and find the right customers. These projects generally don't consist of putting-out fires and fixing one component on a site. Issues like those generally arise from poor-planning, and DIY nightmares. The clients I seek are the ones who are looking for a 100% custom-built website and are looking for a site that's designed to the highest standards. 

Of-course, by adding live chat I'm interacting with all types of customers, and honestly— lots of these visitors aren't looking for what I mentioned above. Some of them have fires— a few have fires NOW! But, since I'm a very social person, and by “JUST BEING THERE”, I've turned casual lookers into customers in minutes. I've literally done in 15 minutes, what would take me a week to do by answering emails and scheduling phone-calls. It's causing me to totally re-think my customer service & business development methods. 

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Making your own Tiny URL and making it awesome.

You've seen tiny URLs everywhere, and thought it might be cool to set-up your own, right? 

I did this in a matter of hours, and it wasn't that difficult. Well, unless you're -not- a web professional.

What do you want to do with your Tiny URL?

It's a valid question. There are hundreds, if not thousands of reasons to have a short URL. In my case, I wanted to use the URL for social links & tracking, and while I'm at it— it would be cool to use it for links to stuff that I share on cloud storage. 

Purchasing a short URL

The domain I found is CR8.CC. It's short, and it kind-of says what I do: I CREATE. It also just happens that since my company is Creative Component — the ".CC" fit nicely here. 

I was undoubtably lucky to find such a short name. Mine was actually a doman listed in a GoDaddy auction. I quickly learned that in GoDaddy's domain auction world, if you buy a domain auction, you might not get access to it for up to two weeks! The "owner" (registrant) hadn't yet released it to GoDaddy, and there could be a chance that during this grey period, the registrant could again realize the value in the name and re-up the ownership. Mine was released in one week, which was a pain to wait— but I got my name! 

Setup your subdomains

Wherever you purchase your main tiny domain, you'll want to set-up subdomains there for each service you want to use. In my case, I needed a subdomain to set-up my bit.ly account, and another subdomain for my CloudApp account. If you ONLY want to use the tiny URL for link shortening-only, then you could probably just -not- make a subdomain, but it's likely that in a week or two, you'll want to do something else with the domain— so rather than re-configure everything in the future, just consider adding subdomains now.

For bitly, I went with "GO.CR8.CC" and on CloudApp, "i.CR8.CC". Obviously, in a 140-character world, the shorter— the better.

If you want to use either of these services, here is the information you will need for the domain tweakage:

Custom Domains on CloudApp: http://go.cr8.cc/CloudAppDomain

Custom Domains on Bit.ly: http://go.cr8.cc/BitlyDomain

Onward with making links. 

I already had a 'Pro' account over at bit.ly. Having an account allows you to track everything you ever need to shorten using bit.ly or any one of their other daughter URLs (bitly.com / j.mp). If you don't have an account, go apply for a free one now. 

Once you set-up your account, you will want to add the custom subdomain to your settings page. Then when using the URL, you can add their custom plugins on every browser you use. Just search for "Adding bit.ly to Chrome / ...to Safari / ...to Firefox" and you'll be sure to find plugins, or use their simple drag/drop tools found here: https://bitly.com/pages/tools. This is important, because the links you're browsing are the ones that you want to share, and instead of copying the links in your clipboard and slogging-over to bit.ly to create a shortened link— you can just do the shortening with a click without leaving the page you're on.

You'll also be able to set-up many apps with your custom bit.ly domain. There's a great list here: https://bitly.com/pages/partners showing a range of Twitter apps.

Personally, I use a simple (Mac) app called Wren (http://wrenapp.com) — made for SENDING weets instead of reading them. It's a great way to share a thought or a link and keep on working! I also use TweetDeck for custom bit.ly domains. TweetDeck is the exact opposite of Wren, sucking you into a full-on city of Twitter activity. 

For the iPhone, Tweetbot (http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot) is incredible, and your short URL integrates nicely there.

Another great feature of running bit.ly on mobile— their site works on all devices, and your custom URL is tracked & copied quickly and easily. 

tip: I've been working at my desk computer and thought to send a link to my iPhone (to use within an iPhone app). Now instead of emailing it, I can just make my own bitly link— which automatically appears on the bitly homepage on my iPhone— saving me so many headaches!

In the Cloud

If you followed the CloudApp link above, you may have noticed that in order to add a custom domain to CloudApp, you need to be a paying member. Unfortunately, this is true— but the extra storage, the unlimited number of things to upload/share and the custom domain are worth it to me.

If I've forgotten a step, or if you have any questions or ideas, just give a shout in the comments— or shout at me on Twitter. (See? the link at the left is my custom bitly URL. It allows me to track the clicks!)

There are certainly other cloud apps out there allowing you to use custom domains, so just map it out and be creative!

Update on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 by Alan Houser

Oh snap! I almost forgot— with bit.ly, you can make free QR Codes. I made an earlier post to show you how to do that: MAKE FREE QR CODES IN 3 EASY STEPS

Sparrow Raises the bar for iPhone App Demo Websites

For over a year now, I've been running Sparrow Mail for Mac, and it's been a great, streamlined solution for email. A few weeks ago, I installed the new Sparrow iPhone app, and I can tell you— it's fantastic. Great design solutions are about solving problems, and quite-frankly they've killed several Apple dragons that have been circling around the default mail app for years.

To best demonstrate several of the key interactions available on the app, the folks at Sparrow have added several animated click-throughs to the iPhone app's website. This simple solution allows the visitor to quickly become a "user" of the iPhone app, and better than that— this click-through probably converts many a customer.

I recorded a quick video and posted it below.

Video hosting exclusively from Wistia.com, a Squareflair partner.

Squarespace Version 6 - Podcast Episode 202

In our latest podcast episode on Content, Structure & Style we discuss Squarespace version 6 news and share what each of us are looking-forward to most on the new platform.

Visit the podcast site to listen and subscribe.

Also covered in the episode:

- Squarespace 6 News

- Ecommerce questions from Africa

- The best structure for a Squarespace site

- How to become a Squarespace Designer/Developer

(Potentially) Increase Your Upload Speeds to Squarespace

I was averaging 40 K/sec upload speeds to Squarespace, and then I found this information from Google on configuring your network settings to use Google Public DNS. Now I'm averaging 120 K/sec. It's still not great, but I'll take what I can get! 

Here's the scoop: 

When you use Google Public DNS, you are changing your DNS "switchboard" operator from your ISP to Google Public DNS.

In most cases, the IP addresses used by your ISP's domain name servers are automatically set by your ISP via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). To use Google Public DNS, you need to explicitly change the DNS settings in your operating system or device to use the Google Public DNS IP addresses. The procedure for changing your DNS settings varies according to operating system and version (Windows, Mac or Linux) or the device (computer, phone, or router). We give general procedures here that might not apply for your OS or device; please consult your vendor documentation for authoritative information.

Note: We recommend that only users who are proficient with configuring operating system settings make these changes.

After the jump: Configuring your network settings to use Google Public DNS