Custom Chatbox Header

Your new chatbox on your site would simply not be complete without your company name in the chatbox header. Quickly and easily set up the header by adding a logo image or text.
Easily upload your custom banner and favicon, and use a custom domain name.
Custom Images & Greeting Text

Quickly & easily change the greeting text, upload your logo, and operator pictures to put the stamp of your brand on your chatboxes.

Your News and Special Offers

You decide what your website visitors see under the chatbox: latest news, special offers, discount coupons, reseller programs, or even affiliate banners with images and hyperlinks.

Chatbox skin Customizations

Choose from one of our readymade skins, and then make alterations to the size and images to make your chatbox to blend with the exact look & feel of your existing site.

Offline & Leave a message

Use our handy “leave a message” feature to receive potentionally dismissable information from your website visitors whenever you are not available to answer in real time. Messages arrive to your Email inbox.

The post Script which you will need appeared first on Promptchat.

1) The transcript will not be sent until the visitor is still on the web site. So if he stays on the website intentionally or leaves the site opened in a tab of his browser the chat transcript will not be sent until he closes it. After he closes the browser it will take 5 minutes for the session to expire. After that the transcript will be cleared for sending on that criteria.
2) The transcript will not be sent before the operator leaves the chat session. Until the session is still in any of the operators chat lists the transcript will not be sent. If the chat stays there too long (more than 12 hours after the last message) it will be removed automatically without classification by category and department. After the chat if left automatically or manually by all operators participating in it the transcript will be cleared for sending on that criteria.

My guess is that the observed behavior was caused by one or a combination of both this rules.

Still there are other possibilities:

3) The server remains operational only as long as at least one visitor or operator is connected (from any of the accounts). It is possible but not very probable that:
- a person request a transcript and leaves the web site.
- the operator leaves the session and log off.
- no other visitors are there on any of the web sites handled by the server.
- no other operators are connect on any of the accounts handled by the server.

In this case the transcript will not be sent until somebody starts using the server (operators logs in or visitors arrives on a web site. It does not need to be on the same account just on the same server).

4) The SMTP server on the server may have experienced problems. (You should check the SMTP server logs)

5) And of course it may happen due to a bug in Promptchat, but since the e-mail got eventually delivered this is not very probable.

The post Why delayed the chat transcripts (by e-mail) appeared first on Promptchat.

• The scripts that are executed most often are optimized to take minimal amount of resources.
• The database is designed with performance in mind. For example all relations between tables are maintained by the PHP code to ensure maximum database performance. Also the database is designed to reduce and simplify the request executed most often.
• On the dedicated servers that Apache server is compiled in MPM mode workers, which significantly boosts the performance allowing the server to handle large number of relatively simple requests.
• An appropriate keep-alive timeout is set for the apache TCP connection. That way under normal conditions the Client software and the Visitor’s browser do not need to reestablish the TCP connections at all.
• On the dedicated server all required PHP modules and only they are compiled with PHP and PHP is used as apache module.

If this server is dedicated to run only Promptchat it should be able to handle 500-1000 requests per second. That
should be sufficient to handle 2000-3000 simultaneous visitors and around 200 operators.
The number of websites depends on the load of each web site.

For small business web sites the number is probably around 150.

The post The server is designed appeared first on Promptchat.

Apache 2
- The .htaccess files should be enabled.
- mod_rewrite should be available.
- if possible compile Apache 2 and configure it to run in MPM mode workers.
- configure the TCP connection to be kept alive for 15 seconds.

PHP5
- Apache should be configured to recognize files with extension .php5 as php scripts.
- The following php modules are reuired: mbstring, mcrypt, mysql, mysqli, zlib

MySQL 5

The post The VPS server must have the following appeared first on Promptchat.

HOW TO USE LIVE CHAT SOFTWARE FOR BUSINESS … REVEALED FOR THE FIRST TIME

Including: What Live Chat Companies don’t want you to know

The mistakes they actually encourage you to make BUT by the time you know about it they have your money.

AND HOW YOU CAN TURN THIS ALL AROUND BY USING LIVE CHAT SOFTWARE AS IT IS REALLY MEANT TO BE USED.

Have you seen those chat buttons on websites? Have you ever wondered if it could work for your business?

OR DO YOU THINK THAT NOBODY CAN BE BOTHERED TO USE IT AND IT WILL ALSO BE A DRAIN ON YOUR RESOURCES?

For those people that don’t know “Live chat” is the equivalent of using texting capability on your website. You communicate in real time with your website visitors. Sounds straight forward enough doesn’t it?

Well it would be if it was used properly!

You see the problem is with the way live chat has been sold and with it the resulting expectations. The application of Live Chat in an AFTER sales support environment is the perfect place because by definition the people coming to the site have come there for a very specific reason. BUT what happens when this model is used to try to generate sales?

In the sales environment people want to be left alone until they are ready to buy. Consider your own experience.

You walk into a clothes shop. After 2 minutes a voice says “Can I help you”? You automatically reply ‘’No, thanks’’.

What does the sales girl do? She shuffles away and leaves you alone with no hope of knowing when is a “good “time to talk with you. And it’s exactly the same for online business.

A PROACTIVE CHAT INVITATION SCARES PEOPLE AWAY.

And the simple fact is no matter how sophisticated the technology or the “cleverly” scripted proactive interventions are, people want to talk when they are only ready to talk and that is it.

IN OTHER WORDS IT’S A HIT AND MISS APPLICATION THE WAY IT’S CURRENTLY USED.

And sure some of the time you will get lucky. BUT YOU CAN NEVER BE 100% sure they are ready UNLESS THEY OF COURSE INITIATE THE CHAT.

And this is the part that the old fashioned chat companies just don’t let on about. They actively encourage you to buy the chat software for sales purposes and they tell you that you will increase your conversion rate by 20-25% and maybe this can happen by itself but it is rare. More likely you will switch the chat button off yourself due to non-use, mis-use (ill-timed interventions) or just simply you don’t have the dedicated resource to wait around on the off chance someone will want to chat with you over a sales issue.

Because what they will actually do is click away to your competition where the information is laid out a bit more clearer so they actually don’t have to waste time chatting with you…

THAT IS WORTH REPEATING ISNT IT?

THE KEY HERE IS THE FLOW OF THE WEBSITE AND KEEPING THEM INTERESTED IN YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT AND THAT CONTENT IS WHAT WILL SELL FOR YOU – NOT THE LIVE CHAT BUTTON.

And here is the secret of its misuse and ultimately its right use.

THE KEY IS NOT TO BE TAKEN IN BY ALL THE RUBBISH WRITTEN ABOUT “YOU WILL INCREASE YOUR ONLINE CONVERSIONS BY BLAH, BLAH %”. You might do but you won’t find out until you have dedicated a fair resource behind it and even then without the right tools to help you time the intervention its still hit and miss. In other words the product is intangible and that is why the drop-out rates are very high and brushed under the carpet.

SO WHO ARE WE TO MAKE SUCH CLAIMS AND WHY SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO US?

We are a Live Chat company who happens to also have the most sophisticated real-time website traffic monitoring technology in the industry.

I mean we can not only do the usual things like see your site visitors in real time, from which page they have come from, keywords they have used etc… BUT we can show you how they are scrolling your pages, what they are clicking on, what they read and what they don’t read, points of hesitation etc… BUT you know what? Why use that information to help time your proactive interventions better (which you can do but its still hit and miss and takes up a resource) when you can use the chat software (without all that sophistication and with less time and effort on your part) to improve the automation of the website and which will lead to more sales .

YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SAIL THROUGH YOUR SITE AND TO ORDER AUTOMATICALLY AND ACTUALLY SO DO YOUR SITE VISITORS!

AND THAT IS THE HARSH REALITY THAT THE CHAT COMPANIES DO NOT WANT TO FACE UP TO.

Look don’t get me wrong we have developed things like embedded chat which means you don’t get a scary pop up box. We have developed sophisticated “chat up lines” for timed and strategic conversational use. As I mentioned we have even got the ability to monitor mouse and keyboard activity in real-time. I mean we have got all the technology to help you build online trust with your website visitors.

BUT I’m not sure you REALLY want this?

I mean if you do great, it’s good for us because we will charge you some good money every month and yes you will see the returns if you are willing to put the required effort in.

BUT before you even have to think about doing that why don’t you do the simple thing first and use it to improve automation?

LET ME SHOW YOU HOW EASY IT IS.

In order to automate your site successfully you can install the chat button for a limited time and wait for your site visitors to initiate chats.

Why would any of your website visitors want to chat and haven’t I just said most of them will not bother? Yes I said this but here is the key. There will be a few that will want to chat and thank God for you it is actually a relative few compared to the amount of tire kickers that actually visit the site.

NOW THAT WOULD MEAN THEY HAVE QUESTIONS AND QUESTIONS MEAN DOUBTS AND ANYONE WITH DOUBTS WILL NOT PROCEED TO PURCHASE. But do you think these people will be the only ones with doubts?

No, the other ones have already clicked away to your competition.

The chats you get therefore will be from motivated site visitors and what they say will be representative of what a lot of your site visitors think but ordinarily will not be bothered to tell you.The chats you get will be therefore worth their weight in gold. Precisely because they will reveal areas of your website where there is a lack of clarity.

You don’t need to dedicate any particular resource for this as you are not wanting nor encouraging chats. Further as they will be chats initiated by the site visitors themselves who could frankly go elsewhere that in itself is another reason to act upon the chats.

You see the irony is, is that what we have discovered is that you can use Live Chat software to actually improve the automation of your website.

And the further irony is that when you really think about it, it’s the best way to actually automate your website because what is the first thing all the Internet Marketers say.

”Listen to what your customers want and give them what they want”. LIVE CHAT IF USED THIS WAY WILL ENABLE THIS.

BUT DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR THIS.

If you are serious about your website business install the chat button on your website and just wait for the chat button to “flash “ or “ring”. If you get no chats you either have the perfect website or a website seriously malfunctioning as it would mean hardly any visitors. Either way you get a good insight as to the state of your online business. And more realistically you will get that priceless feedback about the state of your site.

The only thing you need to do is set aside one person (who is always on the computer anyway to be able to take the live chats.

You can do this for as little as a couple of days but certainly no more than a week. This will give you good feedback about improving the site and then you can dump the chat button. (You can now buy a self hosted edition of Promptchat and forget monthly costs.)

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS IF WE ARE ENCOURAGING YOU TO USE OUR ‘ONE TIME PAYMENT’ INSTALLABLE SOFTWARE AND THEN EFFECTIVELY DUMP US?

BECAUSE after seeing the results from the live chat button, sufficient enough people will naturally be curious enough to find out about the visitors that DON’T COMMUNICATE. And that is where Promptchat module #2 comes in. The monitoring of mouse activity (scrolling, clicking, hesitation etc…) in real time, and its interpretation is the next layer of information to uncover that leads to further insights and subsequent improvements. For some examples of thinking “outside the square” to grow your business see http://www.promptchat.com/99-of-our-customers-buy-promptchat-because-of-its-campaign-code-feature/

ARE YOU READY TO SEE HOW YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS REALLY LOOKS LIKE?

Get the Full Version of Promptchat Installable Edition for a onetime payment of US$ 380.

This Promptchat software runs on your own hosting account with full feature set for unlimited domains and unlimited chat operators.

(After payment, feel free to issue a New Support Ticket for free installation.)

The post CHAT SOFTWARE SECRETS appeared first on Promptchat.

Do we have a specific focus or do we casually browse? Do we have a specific agenda or no agenda? Or are we maybe somewhere in between?

Whatever our motive the one thing that is required from us is “attention span”.

All internet advertising mediums are designed to focus and hold our attention and numerous means have been done to cater for this such as adwords, organic seo and social networking sites.

Banner ads are one such medium, and as other competing mediums have grown to grab this collective focus of attention spans, traditional banner ads, have noticeably declined in their click through rates. Naturally such statements are based on a general consensus and there will always be exceptions, and of course you can tinker with content, colours, design and placement etc but the functionality of a traditional banner ad will always remain the same.

Effectively it’s a non-interactive static graphic/txt based form of “push marketing” which basically means it’s interruptive based, and does not necessarily contain the best timing.

Nevertheless it has been traditionally useful for brands that are keen just to build awareness. It has to be said that despite the dwindling number of CTR’s, traditional banner ads are still widely used for this purpose. However with the rise of Web 2.0, internet surfers have been turned into smaller groups of much more targetable traffic, with the consequence that tolerance levels (and therefore the willingness to focus attention) have led to the browser being able to be more ive in what content they view.

As the power has switched from the advertiser to the consumer, newer ingenious means have been developed by the banner ad industry, to compete for the attention of the browser.

The banner ad industry has made attempts, to be more user friendly, and banner ads that grab more attention video ads, expandable ads, floating ads, Flash based ads have all been used to turn banner advertising into a more dynamic and interactive medium in order to woo the browser.

However it is now recognized that the recipient is more in control of what to click on, when and why and as mentioned above, the newer “rich media” dynamic ads recognize this by trying to make the advert more compelling. Still, a flaw was soon spotted by one company who made the observation that this new media application within the banner ad did not go far enough in respecting the sovereign nature of the browser. It still relied on push methods of advertising therefore lacking the interaction necessary through the banner ad that would empower the browser to feel that they indeed are the ones initiating action.

So it became necessary to devise a means of drawing the visitor in, and that was to be done by encouraging visitor interactivity which would be more in tune with the shifting power of ivity that has swung back to the site visitor. CPX Interactive became one of the first to introduce an advert promoting an incentive which in order to receive it the site visitor had to answer a series of questions, that a) leads to further options for the site visitor to click and b) occurs in pop up windows within the same page. This led to an above average response, because of the novelty of the interactivity.

Three things were accomplished:

1. Firstly the site owner was pleased as the whole interaction took place on his page.
2. Secondly the advertiser was pleased because not only were his clicks increased but more importantly the quality of the clicks were improved simply by having the interaction.
3. Thirdly, those that had clicked were not only more numerous but because of the interaction now had a feel good factor about clicking on the banner ad and therefore would be much more likely to deal with this company in the future (as opposed to similar companies with similar products advertising in the traditional banner way on the same page).

However, despite being a step forward due to the interactivity it is limited for two reasons.

The visitor can only respond to preset questions and this still has an element of “push marketing” in its approach, and possibly its biggest flaw is that there is no ability for the visitor to ask questions of their own choosing.

Although an attempt has been made to deal with this (by some companies) by having a “robot” (or bot) reply with canned answers. This of course is limited to anticipated questions, and being human we tend to have varied questions and moreover questions about answers and further questions etc which the robot could not answer.)

This is the current situation within the banner industry. And there is a gap to fill to take the industry to the next level.

What can help the increasingly empowered site visitor exercise that power within a banner ad that will ultimately lead to more interaction and therefore more opportunities for the advertiser?

Only something that can facilitate his or her questions and also be the medium to provide answers in real time that can be varied and not canned. Introducing: Promptchat Live, Interactive Chat within a Banner Our Live Chat within a banner service fills this gap by enabling a two way conversation to take place within the ad.

Here is example of how it can be used:

An advert promoting software that “is the only software guaranteed to double your sales”. Essentially that’s the only text in the ad and the “call to action” is a “sign up now” button which you are supposed to click, this then takes you through to a sign up page with a lot of information to read (and which takes a while to load).

There are multiple placements of this ad throughout the page. So what goes through my mind is “clearly they would like me to click on sign up now and they think that by reading “double your sales guaranteed” that will motivate me but that is because they are thinking from their point of view as to what they would like me to do.

This does not take into account my point of view that I am already on a page that I’m interested in and that I haven’t come searching for their product – which means my attention span is by definition limited and probably not interested in pursuing anything else (especially if its going to take too much time to investigate and decide whether its even worth my attention).

In other words as a site visitor I want to have a quick filter to see if this is worth pursuing or not. This also helps the advertiser to qualify me as a prospect and turn me from a curious visitor to a motivated visitor.

What if questions like “how will it double my sales?” or “by what method?” (Or any other varied and unpredictable questions) could be instantly answered? But, it’s not just the answering that’s important, it’s the fact that I don’t have to spend time thinking about having to click away to get my answer.

Sure the answer may be somewhere on their website (at this point I will be considering the time its going to take to find it and asking myself if I am motivated enough to even bother to go looking for it) no, right now I require an immediate response so my attention span can be satisfied.

And it is the medium of live chat which is the only filtering process which can fulfill that. OK if I get my answer then I may click to the website and sign up or come back another day, but at the very least I have been turned from an ordinary site visitor, into a potentially motivated visitor through the interaction.

And this gives the company a better chance of selling to me. So if there was a button saying “Chat live now” or “Find out how now, chat here live” I might be motivated to pose a question off my own bat.

The second method initiates my response and may trigger me if I was not already going to. Either way I’m much more likely to click that button than I am “sign up now”.

But what I think would be a brilliant use of live chat in this example is the following: Just simply have a banner saying “Any questions? – Live Chat available”.

The idea is to pick up the ones who don’t instantly click “sign up now” but are rather in the majority of cases going to be in the all too familiar category highlighted above of wanting to have a question answered before going further.

So by arousing my curiosity enough to want to investigate further (by the wording in the advert) but not enough to take up too much valuable attention span time, you set up a dynamic within the advert that produces a call to action, that allows for further filtering, through a question, that the wording in the advert actually s in the mind of the visitor. This is an example of its possible usage.

The post Banner advertising – the next phase appeared first on Promptchat.

You can greet each of your website visitor with a personalised greeting text and picture in the top area of the chatbox.

You can prepare a personalized chatbox for each of your online campaigns, wheather that be a Google ad, a banner ad or Email campaign, Promptchat knows which campaign this visitor came from and automatically appear to this visitor upon arrival to your website.

Here is an example:

You are selling contact lenses.

You have a lot of competition on the internet and you choose to advertise with Google adwords to generate traffic to your site.

By nature, people are going to have questions before buying contact lenses.
Chances are good that they will not buy from you online on your website by filling in some sort of a shopping cart.

You have to sell it to them over the phone after you answered at least 10 questions. This is how you were selling in the past 5 years too and you have no reason to believe online buyers are different to the ones who visit your high street shop. Note, you ackonwledge that each click will cost you a dollar at the least.

Therefore, your objective is to get your website visitors on the phone with one of your skilled skilled sales consultants.

So here is what you do:

Your Google advert will look something like this:

——————————
Contact lenses, new arrival
Buy 1 get 1 free
First 50 clickers only
http://www.yourwebsite.com
——————————

You can prepare a special chatbox in Promptchat which will automatically appear on your website but only for the people who click on this Google advert.

The greeting text in the top part of the chatbox will say something like this:

————————————————————————————–
Congrats! You are our #27th clicker, thus you qualify for our Buy 1 get one free offer.
Call us now on 0207 193 7481 and Quote: “June special” to claim your 2nd pair lenses for free.
————————————————————————————–

Your chances of getting a phone call has just doubled
The money you spend on the click is justified. (you have a potential buyer on your phone)
You don’t waste time and money having to prepare a new landing page for every campaign you do.
You narrow your visitors attention down to one single action to take – Place a call to get a good deal.

If you have 5 different Adwords campaign running plus 3x banners on partner websites and do regular Email campaigns, you can prepare different chatboxes with different greeting texts/call to action for every campaign.

The beauty is that it is all automatic, you never actually have to engage in a live chat conversation if you do not want to.

Another unique feature of Promptchat is that you can display your own PPC style rotating adverts of your own products in the area under the chatbox. This is a prime space on your website and it a standard part of the chatbox designed to help you navigate your webvisitors to your special offers/free ebooks etc…

The post 99% of our customers buy Promptchat because of its campaign code feature. appeared first on Promptchat.

<< Download Promptchat 3.0 >>

2. You can download the latest Chat Centre client software with the below link:

<< Download Chat center 3.0 >>

Chatbox skin Customizations

Choose from one of our readymade skins, and then make alterations to the size and images to make your chatbox to blend with the exact look & feel of your existing site.

The post Downloads appeared first on Promptchat.

We supply example graphics files and you can download these sample files and instructions from here: http://promptchat.com/chatcenterRebrandingMaterials.rar

The post White label live chatcenter server system. We will rebrand the chatcenter client software appeared first on Promptchat.

We supply example graphics files and you can download these sample files and instructions from here: http://promptchat.com/BrandingMaterials.zip

Read the todo.txt notepad file first and follow those instructions.

The post White label live chat server system. We will rebrand the chat client software appeared first on Promptchat.