Choosing Online Consultant (live chat)

Choosing Online Consultant (live chat) for site SportKlon.ru — Comparison of JivoSite.ru and SiteHeart.com

Purpose: increase the convenience of the service, increase the conversion on the site.

Project: Sports Clone - Online Home Sports Training

Site project: http://sportklon.ru

Considered Online Consultants (Live Chats): JivoSite.ru и SiteHeart.com.

The choice fell precisely on these Online consultants because of their prevalence, reasonable price (both chats also have a free tariff), number of features (the paid version of JivoSite.ru clearly won here), and ease of integration. The remaining Online consultants were scared off by their price, other shortcomings, or simply were not considered, for which partly thanksarticle on Habra.

Well, let's get started

A small preamble. One of the most important characteristics of any web service is maximum convenience for its users . Considering that services (interfaces) can be globally divided into simple and complex, measures to increase user convenience should be different. For the Sport Clone service, the simplification of the interface is not yet considered, therefore, the Online Consultant is the ideal solution to increase its convenience. This decision was also influenced by the subject of the service - sports . In this topic, it’s hard to universalize everything , so quick help on the site will do just fine.

First try, SiteHeart chat

We initially set up chat from SiteHeart.com. They chose it because of the availability of a free tariff without cutting functionality and the presence of “Single Sign-On Technology” or “SSO” . In a nutshell, thanks to this technology, you can palm off a consultant's name, photo, mail, etc. visitors to the site, unless, of course, the site already “knows” them. Thus, it is not necessary to question users who they are. Agree, a useful feature. But we didn’t get to the implementation of this feature due to problems that arose during the initial testing of the chat:

1. Problem number 1 (not critical, but very unpleasant). You can’t just take and customize the appearance of the chat bookmark from SiteHeart. This action can be done using CSS rules, overriding the default rules by adding, as the documentation recommends, adding! important at the end of the new rules.

   

   We wanted to defeat this problem and even won, having received something like:

   

   I wanted to change the direction of letters using CSS, but then the text would not be readable, because each letter is separate <div> block. It would be necessary to change the order of block letters. The simple solution that you saw was to write in the chat admin panel the phrase on the contrary “Online Rendering” . But this is not an option, because this phrase is used in the chat window that opens. In any case, here we decided to pause on the design of the button.

2. Problem number 2 (not critical). We’re confused about Enterprises in the chat account. Let me explain, an enterprise is a separate chat, which is hosted on a separate site. Having created several operators, each of them was created by default in the site system and assigned its own enterprise, which for some reason was not deleted. As a result, in the client monitoring admin panel there were 1 + the number of enterprises operators. Total 4. Also, each operator can go into the chat settings and see the chat code, which is unique for everyone. You can get confused too - what to take !? In a good way, it would be correct to spread the operators and chat settings , as done in JivoSite.ru.

3. Problem number 3 ( critical , in our opinion). When we began to test the chat, when we clicked on the button and opened the chat window, we saw the following picture:

   

At the same time, the Operator was already in his personal account. The phrase “Connection with the operator” everything was and was and never disappeared. At first, we thought that this phrase was caused either by the incorrect insertion of code by us, or by the problems of connecting the Operator. But it turned out to be much simpler. Googling a little on the Internet and finding similar questions, but without answers, we turned to the Online Consultant at SiteHeart.com. Here, at least, one more good argument - why such a consultant is needed. It was there that they told us that it turns out that until the Operator accepts the dialogue for his part, this phrase will hang. This did not suit us, because if we thought that the chat was not working, then the user will decide and close it all the more.

Second Attempt, JivoSite Chat

The only barrier why we did not immediately start with this chat was the paid functionality , which we needed, for example, setting a unique visual display of the button (we’ll call it easier - button customization ) and lack of SSO technology or the like, described above in the article. We really need the latter very much, since, in fact, almost everyone who would write to us in the chat would already be authorized on the site. Naturally, we do not want to once again interrogate a person what his name is and what kind of mail he has, if the site already knows this. But you have to pay for all the good and we, realizing this, began to put JivoSitechat.

We did not encounter any problems with installing the chat and setting it up. We quickly closed up questions arising on the way to setting up a chat, finding out their solution in the Online Consultant on the JivoSite.ru website itself. The main thing that interested us:

• Full customization of the chat button. Unfortunately, how to do this obviously was not clear and we turned to technical support, where we were immediately given a direct link. As we understood later, eagerly rummaging through the site in search of documentation, this instruction lies in the section Instructions at the very end and we simply didn’t get to it. In our opinion, it is worth taking it somewhere else or raising it higher. As a result, very quickly we made the button not a picture, but a layout block <div>. Here's how we did it before.:

      

  Due to the fact that the button is not displayed for a long time, because the chat itself is loaded only after the site is loaded, we inserted a stub button with a GIF (see above the second picture). We did not customize the chat itself, because its design is quite and completely suitable for us, just chose the right colors through a convenient design settings service in the admin panel:

  

  Chat is loaded quickly and the operator does not need to reap anything until the user writes something.

• Open API or SSO technology for integrating chat with users of our service. We think that this was still the main reason why we did not start with this chat. As I wrote above, this technology is important to us. In this chat, as we understood, there is a similar integration, but only with the system Bitrix24 that does not suit us. But there is good news - we were assured of technical support that JivoSite will soon have such a technology, however, we were not told the exact or approximate date of its appearance.

What is the result?

In the end, we stop on a chat from JivoSite.ru., choosing a tariff for a year to pay less per month.

But still, we will very much wait for the possibility of integration with data from our service users.

Why did we choose JivoSite?

Based on weighing the pros and cons, believing that the latter, based on the words of JivoSite technical support, will become pluses within a month or two. We will not describe the pros and cons in detail for each chat, just write the pros and cons that these 2 chats differ in our opinion:

Siteheart

Pros:

• Existence of a free tariff without limitation of the main functionality. We pay only for automatic responses of the Robot to save time and resources. But the robot is not at all interesting to us.
• There is a visualizer. That is, you can see which users and where on the site are, as well as you can manually access them. An unambiguously convenient feature allows the Operators not to sit and get bored when no one writes to them, which naturally raises the conversion on the site . We put a bold plus.
• There is SSO technology. Although we still haven’t reached its implementation, we willingly believe that it exists and works.

Minuses:

• There is less functionality for the chat admin panel. There is much less functionality for setting the chat itself in the chat admin panel, there is no version of the personal account for Operators under the PC.
• In order for the phrase “Connection with the operator” to disappear, the operator must accept the chat. This prevents the user from immediately starting to write, he is waiting for when, well, when the “wheel will spin” and the chat will “work.”
• There is no easy way to customize the chat button. And the difficult way that seasoned layout designers or programmers can go does not allow you to do this completely the way they want.
• There is no clear separation of Operators and chat settings. Each operator can become a “self-adjuster”.

JivoSite

Plus:

• You can visually customize the chat button as we want. Cool? Cool! And we did it really fast. Moreover, before doing it ourselves, in the admin panel we found convenient tools for creating buttons for “ordinary people”. So this plus should be at least bold.
• More functionality in the chat admin panel. The admin panel allows you to more sophisticatedly configure the chat without losing any convenience. There is also functionality that competitor chat does not have. I will say right away that we have not yet used everything, but at least the Pointer has already pleased. The rest, we hope that in the process will also please us no less.
• Better interface, better default design. We found the interface inside the chat admin panel to be an order of magnitude better than that of the competitor. We will not describe in detail, but this is clearly an obvious plus for JivoSite. The same applies to the chat widget itself - it definitely looks better than a competitor’s chat.
• There is no division into tariffs by functionality. Still, we believe that this item should be noted as a plus. When you don’t really know if you need this or that functionality, you don’t want to delve into and understand whether you need this or that before the purchase. I just want to buy and enjoy buying.

Minuses:

• There is no open API and / or SSO technology. For us it is very important and for us it is a significant minus. But considering that we were promised in technical support that it will be soon, we close our eyes to this minus.
• There is no visualizer. In technical support, we were told that this functionality will be implemented in advance within 1-2 months. What we very much hope, as it’s very convenient when you see who and where is on the site and you can directly contact a person and offer him, for example, to buy paid services on the site.

PS: It is a pity that we did not compare other Online consultants reviewed by us. We quickly ran through the most-most, surfing the Internet. Those consultants that we liked turned out to be too expensive (LiveChat, Cribble, etc.), and the rest we found no better than JivoSite or SiteHeart. This was our choice and opinion, based on our goals and site level, it's still a service. But, as they say, there are no friends for the taste and color, so another chat may be suitable for you. Good luck to everyone and thank you for your attention.!