Running a business isn’t easy. If it was we’d all be doing it! There’s so much to do both dealing with your clients and the day-to-day tasks that keep everything running smoothly. With so much on the cards, it can be a wonder that there’s enough hours in the day!

With so much being crammed into your schedule, sometimes it can be hard to squeeze keeping on top of your website maintenance. We’ve seen many an agency website go out of date and the reason is always the same, “I don’t have time”. With all that in mind, I can almost picture the look in your eye when I tell you that you should have a live chat feature on your website.

In terms of lead generation a live chat feature is one of your strongest tools. Every person who comes across your website didn’t happen upon in by accident, they have a need that you can service and they’re looking into why you are the business to use. However, as people’s attention spans become increasingly brief, the content on your website may just not be enough.

On average, a user will look at roughly 20% of a website, and of the 20% they read, only another 20% will be retained. That leaves just 4% of your website content stuck in their mind!

As much as your website is an important tool and needs to be as strong as possible, to an average user who’s just browsing it can be hard to convey the information you need. It’s here that live chat comes in.

A live chat feature on your website allows your visitors to quickly and efficiently get the specific information they require in an engaging manner. They don’t have to scroll through pages and pages of text looking for an answer, they have a helpful human there to guide them. In addition to helping your visitors get the information they need, by talking to a person they are far more likely to leave you their contact information making a conversion far easier.

We reached out to Maurice Kilbride, the MD of Maurice Kilbride Estate Agents, for his thoughts. He uses live chat on his website and he had this to say:

“Live Chat should be an essential facility on an estate agents website today. It gives potential customers the opportunity to ask questions without them feeling pressured & establishes the agency as a modern, progressive company, committed to providing the best service 24 hours a day – seven days a week – it is a no brainer for me!“

Let’s face it; you agencies have your work cut out. It’s a crowded market with stock becoming harder and harder to come by. With traditional agents being undercut by online agents, and online agencies (allegedly) not being able to provide the same service as the traditional, competition is fierce. Anything you can do that provides that added value is well worth doing and live chat certainly fits that bill.

I know what you’re thinking though “I don’t have time to be sitting around waiting for someone to chat through my site”, and you’re right, not many people do. The great thing about some of these services is that you don’t have to run them yourself. With providers like Yomdel and various others, they will man your chat service for you, capture your users’ data, and provide answers to any queries your users can throw at them based on information you’ve supplied.

We asked Andy Soloman, the CEO of Yomdel, for a few words on why his clents benefit from the service and he was only to happy to oblige:

“Your customers want immediate help and 50% of your visitors will be on your website outside business hours. Having live chat available 24/7 means you are open round the clock, giving you a unique benefit versus your competitors.”

“One of our clients, in their first month received 14 market appraisal requests via Yomdel’s live chat service. Out of the first 7, they closed 3 instructions, 2 went under offer the same day as going on the market, and they bagged £7,725 in fees. This was a huge multiple over the cost of the service.”

We began live here at Estate Apps as a trial a few months back, I'm sure you've seen the orange chat box in the bottom right? Since it's launch I have to say the response has been great. We’ve got more incoming leads than before and in general our users experience has been improved. Having a human to guide our clients through the process has had such a positive effect for us and I’m sure it will do for you too!