Chat is a crucial element of eCommerce sites, whether you’re answering questions live or using a chatbot to engage visitors. Your potential (and existing) customers have come to expect the instant contact and answers live chat provides.

You’ve put your time and energy into building your site and attracting visitors. That’s the first step. Now it’s time to think about ways to keep them coming back. Being responsive and engaging is the key to that retention.

I mentioned that some of the early WordPress live chat plugins left a lot to be desired. But times and technology have changed, and live chat is easier and better than ever.

Follow along with this tutorial and see if you don’t agree.

Installing the Tidio Live Chat Plugin

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Plugins” link and click the “Add New” link.

In the “Search plugins…” box, enter, “Tidio Live Chat.”

When you find the plugin, click the “Install Now” button.

Now the plugin is installed, but it has to be activated before you can use it.

Click the “Activate” button.

That’s all there is to it. Now let’s put the plugin to work.

Configuring Tidio Live Chat

To use the plugin, you have to set up an account at Tidio. After installation, you’ll be brought to a page where you enter your email address.

When you click the “Let’s go” button, you’ll be taken to the Tidio website.

Continue providing the required information to complete the set up of your account.

When you finish the Tidio chat account setup, you’ll see a button to “Enable notifications.” Click that if you want to receive desktop notifications when there’s a new chat.

When you go back to WordPress, you should see a message verifying that the integration was successful.

Now go back to your site, and you’ll see the chat window.

The chat prompt appears on every page of your site, posts, pages, and your home page.

How Does Live Chat Work?

The plugin configuration and your side of the chats take place on the Tidio website. Not in your WordPress admin panel.

At first, it may seem inconvenient to have to be logged in and connected to another site to perform chats. But it’s typical of most live chat programs, and once you establish a workflow, you’ll hardly notice it.

And the fact that the chat application doesn’t live on your site is actually a good thing. It takes most of the processing burden off of your web hosting. This means it won’t ultimately slow down your website.

Using Tidio Live Chat

If you enabled notifications, you’ll get a message when a new chat starts. Clicking the notification will take you to the chat.

If you don’t use notifications or happen to miss one, there’s an indicator of active chats on the Tidio website.

Click the icon, and the active chats will be listed.

Click a chat to interact with your visitor.

In addition to the chat contents, you can see visitor information on the right.

The location information is based on IP address geolocation. While it’s generally accurate, you may not want to rely on it if you need to know the visitor’s location. VPNs are a popular thing, nowadays.

On the visitor’s side, the chat looks like this.

If you’re offline (or logged out of tidio.com), the chat window lets the visitor leave a message.

Some Useful Advanced Configuration

I can’t go into detail on every available setting for the Tidio chat control plugin. You’ll certainly want to explore, as there are a lot of options. Here are a few that may be useful as you get started.

Pre-Chat Survey

You may have noticed that the example chat here required the visitor to provide their email address. That’s the default setup, and it’s great to have that information.

But your visitors may not want to provide their email addresses, and that could prevent them from asking a question. So let’s take a look at what we need to do to remove that requirement.

In the Tidio dashboard, click the gear icon to access settings.

Scroll down and expand the “Pre-chat Survey” section.

You can disable the pre-chat requirements completely by clicking the “Display” toggle.

Or you can remove the email requirement by clicking the X to the right of the email survey field.

There are options to require email, name, phone number, and GDPR compliance. To add one of those requirements, select it from the drop-down menu and click the “Add” button.

Changing the Chat Icon to a Sidebar

The default chat icon hovers in the bottom right or left corner of the page. If that’s covering part of your content, you can change it to a sidebar link.

Here’s how to do it.

In the Tidio dashboard, click the gear icon to access settings.

Click the “Sidebar” icon.

Click the “Enable” toggle, then click the “Save” button.

Quick Responses

Quick responses are pre-written messages you can use to answer common questions. You access them in a chat by entering “/.”

There are a lot of useful responses there, but what if we want to add our own?

In the Tidio dashboard, click the gear icon to access settings.

Click the “Quick Responses” icon.

Click the “Add” button to create a new quick response.

You’ll notice you can also edit or delete the provided quick responses.

How to Activate Chats After You’ve Been Away

When you log out of Tidio chat or close your browser, live chats are no longer available on your site. Visitors will see the “Leave a message” window. When you log back into Tidio, live chats resume.

If you’re in your WordPress admin dashboard, there’s a quick, easy way to resume chats.

In the left column navigation, click the “Tidio Chat” link.

That will take you to the Tidio login page. Once you’ve logged in, live chat availability resumes.

Your Tidio Account

When you opened an account during plugin configuration, you started a 7-day free trial. The trial gives you access to paid account features like communicator, chatbots, and email.

After seven days, you won’t have access to those paid features unless you upgrade to a paid plan. You can also “downgrade” to a free account at the end of the trial. That way, you can keep using Tidio, but you won’t have access to the paid features.

Seven days is a fair amount of time to see whether your site benefits from live chat. If it does, you’ll probably want access to some of the paid features. Tidio’s monthly prices are comparable to other live chat services.

What Happens if You Uninstall the Tidio Live Chat Plugin

If you uninstall the plugin, live chats will no longer be available on your site.

Since your chat configuration and history are saved on the Tidio site, you can start offering chats again by reinstalling the plugin. As long as your Tidio account is still active, you can pick up where you left off.

Visitor Engagement Is the Key to Success

That’s true whether you’re selling a product or building a personal blog. And there’s no better tool for visitor engagement than live chat.

Chat can benefit any kind of site, but it’s particularly effective on e-commerce sites. The ability to immediately answer a visitor’s question can lead to a sale. A sale that may have been lost without a chat.

Have you ever tried a live chat plugin on your WordPress site? If you’re not running an e-commerce site, can you see any advantages to chatting with visitors?

I’d love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments.

The post How to Add Tidio Live Chat to WordPress for Visitor Engagement appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Instead, we will be adding a social feature from Facebook directly to your website. And of course, I am talking about the Facebook messenger. This is the most fastest-growing messenger in the world, which already has access to almost 2 billion users. This means your visitors will know how to use it and be familiar with the entire system.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use the WP-Chatbot for Facebook Messenger plugin to add a Facebook messenger bot in WordPress.

Why Add A Facebook Messenger Bot In WordPress?

As I said, Facebook messenger has nearly 2 billion users and is expected to reach 3 billion by 2022. Thus, it should be a no brainer to adopt one of the most popular messenger apps on your website today.

You may be wondering what exactly a messenger bot is, but I am sure you have seen one before. For example, have you ever visited a website and see a messenger window popup that is asking if you need help today?

While you may have been impressed at the fast response time, those initial messages are handled through bots. These are a great way to get customers in contact with real agents and boost sales.

Thus, adding any type of messenger bot in WordPress should be a priority for any website.

You can also spend some time adding other Facebook integrationtion into WordPress like a login option or a like button. These can really benefit users and help drive up Facebook engagment.

Installing WP-Chatbot for Facebook Messenger

The WP-Chatbot for Facebook Messenger is one of the best ways to add a Facebook messenger bot in WordPress. It has a host of features that include adding live chat support to any website, continuing chat even when visitors leave your website, access to analytics through the Facebook Developer account, and much more.

Note: Before you start, make sure to create a Facebook business page, obtain your Facebook Page ID, and add your website into the whitelisted pages section of Facebook. You will need to do this before being able to finish the initial setup.

Let’s start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for WP-Chatbot for Facebook Messenger in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the WP-Chatbot for Facebook Messenger plugin. Click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Upon installation, you should see a message that says” Uh oh. Your WP-Chatbox setup is incomplete!” You will need to complete this setup before you can use the plugin.

Connecting WP-Chatbot with Facebook

The first step in this setup is to connect with your Facebook page. Click on the connect “Facebook Page” button.

Upon clicking the button, you will be directed to Facebook. The plugin will attempt to connect with the Facebook account you are currently logged into as. Thus, you should make sure you are logged in on your business account.

Click on the “Continue As Your Name” button.

Another window will appear, with permission information. Click on the “OK” button. Once done, you will return to WordPress.

If you have a business page set up, you should now see it. Click on the “Select” button to connect the plugin with that page.

Note: If you do not have a business page set up, you will not be able to continue with the plugin.

The plugin should now be connected with your Facebook business page.

Setting Up WP-Chatbot

Now that you are connected to Facebook, you can actually begin setting up your messenger bot. It is broken up into 2 parts. The bot’s behavior and customization options.

This tutorial will focus on setting your bot’s behavior and messages.

Initial Message

The first option is the initial message visitors will see in the chat. It is important to keep in mind all of the reasons someone would contact you. For this reason, it needs to be a very broad or generic statement such as “How can we help you today?” or “Would you like to connect with a sales agent?”

Fill out the initial message however you like.

Answering Service

The next section is labeled Answering Service. It will allow the bot to ask some general questions to the visitor. It is off by default and you can choose to leave it like this. However, if you want to turn it on, click on the slider.

By default, there are 3  generic questions the bot will ask. Feel free to delete these and add your own. If you want more than 3 questions, simply click on the “+ Add Question” button.

This will help you gather a bit of information about what the visitor needs. That way, you can prepare to answer specific needs.

Lead Qualifiers

Next, you will see the Lead Qualifier section. This is another way to have your messenger bot ask questions. The default question is “What is your budget?” and allows you to select multiple options. This can help sales agents get to promote the right packages and products to customers.

However, you can make the question and answer choice whatever you want. Which, makes it useful for any type of website. To do so, simply click on that element of the question and you will be able to change the information. If you want more questions, simply click on the “+ Add Question” button.

Underneath this, you can add your email address to receive regular notifications when questions are answered.

Note: This is a pro feature.

Thank You Message

Next, you can customize the thank you message. Visitors will see this when they answer your bot’s questions.

Try to be as courteous as possible!

Q&A Section

The last part is the Q&A section. Here you can add keywords that visitors will say to trigger a response. For example, they may say “I would like to speak to a sales agent.” If you use “agent” as the keyword, you can make the bot respond appropriately. It is a very powerful feature.

Click on the “Save Changes” button when you are done.

Customize

The second part of the setup process is the customize tab. This will determine how things look, how you bot addresses logged in users versus visitors who are not logged in, languages, and other settings.

The choices you make here are completely dependent on your website. Therefore, I recommend carefully going through each setting and picking the option that is best for your website.

Remember to save the changes you make.

You can now visit your website to see the Facebook messenger bot in action.

Congratulations!

Have Your Team Ready

Let’s be perfectly honest, bots can be extremely frustrating to talk to as a customer.  Most customers want to get to a live representative as fast as possible, assuming they are not just playing around.

Thus, you need to make sure you and your team are ready to directly communicate with visitors in a quick manner. The longer a customer interacts with a bot or waits for help is time they are considering going somewhere else. Having lightning-fast communication is vital in keeping customers interested.

Did you run into any problems during the setup process? How many questions did you allow your bot to say?

The post How to Add a Facebook Messenger Bot in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

You can send messages, photos, videos, and voice recordings over the internet, which means your mobile plan is not involved. And better yet, it can work on WordPress as well and it is easy to set up.

Today, I will demonstrate how to add WhatsApp Chat in WordPress using the Click to Chat plugin.

Why Add WhatsApp Chat to WordPress?

There are plenty of situations where you want your visitors or customers to be able to contact you. One of the most important parts of allowing them to do so is how easy it is to do.

And let me assure you, this is one of the easiest methods to achieve that.

For starters, WhatsApp is extremely easy to use and fully supports mobile-users. All of the communication is browser-based regardless of if it is a mobile user or a desktop user. This means you will not be wasting anyone’s precious data.

In fact, any messages, photos, or videos sent using WhatsApp will not be saves to the phone. Thus, you will not be taking up any of their space, which is ideal for mobile users.

Installing Click to Chat

Click to Chat is a WordPress WhatsApp chat plugin that is easy to set up. It simply adds WhatsApp to your WordPress website, and you can place it anywhere shortcodes can be placed. This includes posts, pages, and text widgets.

Let’s begin by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Click to Chat in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Click to Chat plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Setting Up Click to Chat

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Click to Chat and select the Click to Chat option.

Here you will be able to set up how WhatsApp works on your website. There are quite a lot of settings to go through. I will highlight the important ones that are required for the plugin to work, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the others.

In fact, I strongly recommend going through the settings and seeing what works best for your website. Most of the settings are very straightforward, which is why this plugin is perfect for beginners.

The first thing you need to do is add your WhatsApp phone number. If you do not add this, the plugin will simply not work.

Next, you want to add an initial message. This can be something as simple as “Hello” or more specific like “How can the sales team assist you today?”

While this is not a setting, you should take note of your Group ID. Anyone with this ID can join your group chat. It will always be located on this page if you need it at a later date.

The rest of the settings are cosmetic changes. For example, where the app will appear, and how big it will be. This is completely dependent on what works for your website, thus, you should go through each setting to get the best result.

Once you are done, click on the “Save Changes” button.

All that’s left is to actually use it.

Using Click to Chat

Go to any post, page, or text widget on your website. To add the actual app, all you need to do is add the shortcode:[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ][chat][/ht_message]

This will add a small WhatsApp symbol that visitors can click on. Upon doing so, they will either be connected to the app or prompted to set up the app for the first time.

The symbol will look like this:

Congratulations, you have successfully used the Click to Chat plugin to add WhatsApp Chat to WordPress.

Make Sure Customers Can Contact You

If you sell a product or run an online store, I probably don’t need to explain the importance of communication or having a support option. You can achieve this in a variety of ways. It can be as simple as adding contact information or as complicated as having an entire support team.

But in either event, you need to have one. It gives shoppers confidence and adds credibility to your entire business. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of scams on the internet and people are getting wiser. Communication is a surefire way to make your business look trustworthy.

How easy did you find the Click to Chat plugin to use? Where did you place your chat option?

The post How to Add WhatsApp Chat to WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Live chats are a great addition to most websites and work better than comment sections in some cases. The issue with many live chats is that they can cost you money and keeping the costs low is important for every website. Today, I will demonstrate how to add live chat support in WordPress for free using the 3CX Live Chat plugin.

3CX Live Chat

Today, I will demonstrate how to add live chat support in WordPress for free using the 3CX Live Chat plugin. This is the most popular WordPress live chat plugin and has a large number of features for free. Some of them include an easy interface for both visitors and admins, multiple theme chatbox designs, IP banning, no monthly charge, and many more. This plugin is very easy to use and should not take you long to set up.

Before you begin, take the time to install an SSL Certificate. This plugin will not have all of its features available on an uncertified website.

How to Add Live Chat Support in WordPress for Free

Step 1: Install and Activate the Plugin

Start with clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for the 3CX Live Chat plugin in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful. When you see the plugin you want, go ahead and install and activate it right from there.

Step 2: Select a Channel

When you activate the plugin, you will be taken to the activation wizard automatically. From here you can set the plugin up. Go ahead and pick the channel you want and then click on the “Next” button.

Note: For this demo, I chose “Login to WordPress to Answer Chats.”

Step 3: Invite Agents

This is where you will invite the agents you want to handle all of the chats and support. Invite as many as you want and set them all up. When you are finished, go ahead and click on the “Next” button again.

Step 4: Style Settings

Now, select the style settings you want to show. These include the colors shown for the bubble and the plugin buttons.

Again, when you are finished, click on the “Finish” button to finish the activation wizard. You will see an “Activation Complete” message pop up and you are ready to roll.

Go ahead and click on the “Start Now” button to get started.

Step 5: Adjust Any Settings Necessary

This plugin will work after installation, but there are plenty of settings to change. On the left-hand admin panel click on Live Chat and select the Settings option. This will pull up the main settings page.

Customizing WP Live Chat Support

There are plenty of settings to change. Be on the lookout for Pro version exclusive features. You will not be able to use these unless you upgrade to the Pro version. If you expect a high amount of traffic, I highly suggest upgrading.

A very big difference between the free and Pro version is the number of active agents you are allowed. The free version allows for one, while the Pro version is unlimited. Obviously, one person can only handle so many customers at once.

General Settings

You will start off in the General Settings section.  The first option will enable or disable the chat. Make sure the chat is enabled. The next option is very important. You need to decide what information a visitor must input to use the chat support.

You have four options, Name and Email, Name, Email, and No Fields. I recommend not choosing the last option because people are more likely to abuse the live chat if they do not need to input any data and it also makes it easier for bots.

Go through the rest of the settings on these pages. The default options will be more than sufficient for most websites, but feel free to change them to meet your needs.

Make sure to click on the “Save Settings” button when you are done.

Chat Box

Click on the Chat Box option to customize the chatbox.

Here you can customize your settings related to the chatbox. You will notice that quite a few of these are locked behind the pro version, but there are a few settings to take note of. The first is the Auto Pop-up option.

This is off by default because many visitors find pop-ups to be annoying, but you may disagree and want to enable it. The other options to look at are under the GIF Integration section. You can input your Giphy or Tenor API keys here to integrate them into your chat.

Make sure to click the “Save Settings” button to save your work.

Offline Messages

The last field you may want to edit is the Offline Messages section. Click on the Offline Messages option.

Unless you are running a 24/7 support service, you will not be able to answer everyone’s questions. To compensate, visitors have the option of leaving messages. You can customize what they see when they leave the message or if you want them to be able to leave a message in the first place. You can also set the email address that will receive any notifications from the plugin here.

Congratulations, your live chat should now be fully functional. Explore the other settings and customize the plugin how you want it. Remember to click on the “Save Settings” button after you are done in each section.

Pros and Cons of Live Chat Support in WordPress

Pros of Having Live Chat

Live chats make visitors trust a website more and improve customer support. It looks really good to offer support on your website, especially for free.

Visitors who trust a website are more likely to make purchases or enlist in services. Of course, you can also use this chat to help convince visitors to buy something as well.

Offering live chat between visitors is a great way to build a community. Many visitors will come back to talk to a friend they made on your website.

If your products or services are good, then your visitors will share their good experiences with new visitors. Getting positive reviews or recommendations makes your website look great.

Cons of Having Live Chat

Having live chat support has plenty of benefits, but there are many things you need to consider.

First, who is going to represent your website in this live chat? Depending on the hours you advertise, you could potentially need someone or a team to watch for inquiries 24/7.

Unfortunately, the Internet brings out the worst of people in some cases. This can be clearly seen in most comment sections, which is why many websites disable comments. It can get even worse in a live chat.

For this reason, you need to create moderators to remove these unsavory accounts from chat. It might not even be profanity, but rivals or bots advertising their products in your feed. It takes a lot of work to manage a live chat successfully.

Live Chat Support in WordPress Boosts Trust

Interacting and providing excellent customer service is a great way to earn your visitors’ trust. When visitors trust you they become loyal to your website and will recommend your products and services to others. Do not underestimate how important recommendations are from your customers.

There are most likely thousands of other websites that offer the same or similar products or services as you. What can help you stand out is positive feedback and recommendations from visitors. Adding a live chat will help you achieve better customer service and lead to growth.

Do you expect a lot of inquiries through the live chat? Have you upgraded to the Pro version?

The post How to Add Live Chat Support in WordPress for Free appeared first on GreenGeeks.