Your website is slowly but surely losing ground to its competitors. If things keep up the way they’ve been going you might be losing money by year’s end. It is irritating; you were one of the very first sites offering the kind of services you offer and now you are losing ground to these new kids on the block. You’re still ranking high for the essential keywords that you’ve identified and your traffic hasn’t dropped anywhere near as dramatically as your sales have. Your competition only bothered to crawl into the market after you demonstrated how it could be done profitably and now they are stealing bread from your table. But how is it that they are doing it? There’s not a single one of them that has the experience that you do and none of them offer services that measure up to what you’re providing. Possibly it is time you considered setting up live chat software on your site and supplying live customer support.

## The peskiest of these new competitors has something like that on his site. The thing is he’s not selling anything that I don’t sell and frankly he is nowhere near as credible.

That merely goes to demonstrate the power of live chat. What his website has over yours is that his visitors are able to chat live with an operator and get his questions answered right away. The problem is that his visitors were also likely your visitors. People who are prepared to buy want to have any question answered right away so that they can move on with their purchase. It’s not good enough to have a contact email if your competitor has a chat option.

## But I offer a much better service, with superior options. I have got two to three times the experience ,an extensive FAQ page, and a boatload of testimonials. Surely that must count for something.

Of course it does. It counts for a lot as a matter of fact. It likely makes all the difference for every single visitor of yours that goes on to buy your service; but those aren’t the individuals you’re concerned with. You are primarily concerned with the growing number of visitors who are surfing over to your competitors and getting their questions answered there.

## I don’t know if I can afford to renovate my entire site to accommodate a chat system and even if I could I definitely can’t afford to hire people to sit on chat all day.

First of all there are several live chat software solutions on the market (Alive Chat is a popular one) that are simple to install without the need for any major site programming. Also, many of the sites that offer live chat packages can also provide operators who can man the chats. The rates are flexible and affordable and designed to cater to businesses of all sizes. Consider this, if your competitor can afford it on what he is stealing from your table, surely you can afford it on what’s left.

## But how can these hired chat operators be expected to handle my customers?

They’re trained chat operators. You said so yourself, your site has a comprehensive FAQ list. They can be armed with that plus whatever extra information you choose to give them. Live chat isn’t necessarily about giving your customers more information it’s more about the way your information is presented. A visitor who becomes engaged in a sales discussion online is far more likely to commit and convert.

If you’re losing sales to competitors whose only apparent edge is that they have live chat software that allows them to better connect with their customers, then the solution is pretty obvious; simply take that edge away by following suit.

Allow your customers the opportunity to chat live with customer service agents on your site through innovative and industry leading Alive Chat. Visit WebsiteAlive.com to find out more.