Hi All

What do you think about Live Help and Support for visitors? And what software do you use for it?

I suppose it is a great point to turn visitors into customers.

I think having live help on your website can only be a benefit as it is another step to bringing your eCommerce store to life.

I cuurently use Crafty Syntax which is free and great!

Hello Paula,

Never heard of Crafty Syntax. It's good idea. OpenSource is always good
I have experience with LivePerson and BoldChat previously. They are cool solutions.
Not long ago I've found new interesting thing - Sales-N-Stats. It also has freeware edition and looks pretty

I wish to give it a try but don't have enough time now, unfortunately. Had somebody tried it?

Never heard of Sales-N-Stats - I use Boldchat myself and works well, though imo they are overpriced if you want to use their paid version.

my rec is for crafty syntax, works well although the graphics are a little wierd. I put the javascript that crafty syntax generated as a box on my store global template and it worked fine. The main thing though is that it tends to drive people nuts if you don't staff it.

The other thing, I don't know if this is how the other programs work, but with cs as you are watching the visitors, it keeps refreshing and updating your page as often as you want it to. The constant refresh is a little annoying. You can add a windows based executable to do the monitoring from the helper perspective, but found the php version more convenient. Maybe one of the other ones handles the monitoring a little bit better.

BoldChat looks good - but they host all data themselves. And prices a bit high for such functionality.
Crafty Syntax is ok but have lower number fo features then other ones.
My last favor - Sales-n-Stats. It very user-friendly and easy to use. It allows the same functions as BoldChat, LivePerson and GoogleAnalitics but have significantly more features, including very flexible reports mechanism and ability to integrate with any customer database.



Also I've found theme for CubeCart-SnS integration here - http://www.cubecart.com/site/forums/index....l=sales-n-stats

very simple and convenient

I've noticed release of new build of Sales-n-Stats software. Now it works with PHP 5.2 and includes a lot of bugfixes.

http://forum.sales-n-stats.com/showthread.php?t=200

Im just sorting out Kayako for my site, does a bit more than just live chat, also has a knowledge base helpdesk ticket system etc from what ive seen of it upto now looks very good. I am just in the process of having the kayako side of the website designed to look the same as my cubecart site.

The website is http://www.kayako.com


Thanks

Karl Linley
2 Source Ltd.

The thing I like about Boldchat is that they have a free system try chat notifier so I don't have to keep it's webpage open to know when someone wants to chat similar to an IM - it rings at me. Most of the others are all webbased so if you are not watching when someone comes on, you miss the chat. If you accidentally close the browser window, you miss the chat. And generally they don't make sounds when you do get a chat. Some have popup boxes it seems. To get a system tray notifier you have to pay for it with the others.

Only thing I don't like is that they don't auto change the "chat with us" button to "offline" if you log out. That is one of the features you have to pay for that I think should be free.