who's on my site?

[jxm28788]

I recently had the 'liveperson' service on my website which is a chat application, but the admin console it came with provided a really cool feature -

It allowed me to see, in real time, people visiting my site. SO I could see what page they were looking at, and their path through the site etc.

I've since ditched the service because I didn't use the chat enough to justify the cost, and because it based based in the US it was slowing my pageloads down terribly (especially under firefox) as it tried to connect.

But since removing it I've really missed the admin console - I feel lost not knowing if people are on my site or not. When I get no orders for a while I have no clue as to why - before I could at least look in the console and see if there were lots of people on the site (therefore obvisously something wrong if no-one is placing orders) or if it was just a quite period. I could also see people going round in circles in the checkout which was indicitve of a PSP problem.

Soooo... is there a (preferably uk based, and preferably free) service that allows something similar?

If not how hard would it be to create a simple one of these - perhaps based on the session files?

[leehack]

Which one was you using as i have recently added this to a couple of sites, but it is incredibly cheap for what it does in my experience. Pretty sure my guys are only paying something in the region of £30-40 per month and they swear by it. Theirs are US based too, but i have seen no performance issues personally. Maybe you have been using an expensive option?

There is always Google Analytics as a FREE analyser.

[jxm28788]

liveperson(.com)

which one are you using?

[leehack]

Same one as you, example here - http://www.safemount.co.uk/

[jxm28788]

There is always Google Analytics as a FREE analyser.

Yeah, but that's not real-time...

[RuralWeb]

that's not real-time

£40 pm for real time monitoring is on the expensive side for a small site but if its big then its cheap as chips.

[leehack]

Hmmm, i never looked at it like that, i've always been told that for what it costs, it is an absolute bargain, but they are quite busy sites.

[RuralWeb]

but they are quite busy sites

Real time on a busy site can cost a small fortune - as you know I run a realtime tracking system and on a very busy site it could cost more than £40 pm. Throw in the live chat and I think its a good deal.

[jxm28788]

on that bracket site one of the pages took 7 seconds to load on one occassion, although the other pages were all pretty fast. That time was all down to the connection with the liveperson server (it said transferring data to/from liveperson in the bottom left).

However on that site it didn't really make any difference, but on mine the pause came in the middle of loading the page graphics so in firefox at least it could cause some red X's instead of graphics for until live person had finished doing it's thing.

The delay isn't everypage or everytime, just enough to be noticeable.

[RuralWeb]

The delay isn't everypage or everytime, just enough to be noticeable.

You will always get a delay when loading a site with live chat as it needs to communicate with the chat server and that as you say is dependent on thier server.

With realtime tracking only then there is no delay as the tracking communication is one way and at the end of page load.

[jxm28788]

hmm, think I may sign up again but take the chat code out as you suggest. If it's only the chat causing the delay then that will solve that problem.

Or I suppose I could always put the chat code on just teh home page and contact page as opposed to everypage like before.

Just negotiating a discount...

[guccij]

Have a look at www.whoson.com . Live web stats, live chat, click to call back. UK company.

[chris ashdown]

We had a online tracking system for a month or so about 1 year ago, but found the use very wastfull of management time and gave little really usefull information. Google information is of much better quality and of real use to management.

We also decided that the chatline option, whilst useful for a few customers, a major drain on staff time, most questions asked were already answered on the site. after we stopped using the system we found no downturn in sales and still only get one or two inquiry's per week over the phone by people wanting information

I considered that my staff could be better utilised, without suggesting that the customers contact us in this manner

[Mark H]

Does anyone feel that they are really benefitting from a chatline, and if so, does it depend on which market you are in?

[jxm28788]

It helps to convert some orders if the customer has pre-sales queries about stock or the item, but you can also get snowed under with "where's my order?" and other customer support issues.

So if you have low volume, expensive and complicated items - good idea (will increase conversions)
if you have high volume cheap and simple products - bad idea (you will be swamped without any real increase in conversions)