Are you a small or medium-sized builder who thinks live chat for your website is out of reach? I have used live chat with home builder campaigns in the past and I know it can be an effective tool for converting home builder website visitors to leads. That’s why I am so excited about today’s guest post from Justin Shum of ReadyChat. ReadyChat is a company that offers live chat services for home builders as well as a team of people who can proactively engage your website visitors for you. Does live chat really work in converting website visitors to leads? Take a look at this impressive case study from a recent ReadyChat success story:
Proactive Live Chat: Does it Increase Conversion?
Northridge Developments found that putting a live chat service on their builder website helped increase their conversion rate by a whopping 260% compared to their website before adding a live chat feature. Northridge Developments is a family owned and operated new homebuilder in Saskatchewan with over 25 years experience. With offices in Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon, Northridge is the largest homebuilder in Saskatchewan.
Here’s how their website looked like before adding proactive live chat:
Image of website before adding live chat.
Variations with Click to Chat button and Proactive Live Chat feature:
Image of website with live chat button.
Image of website with proactive live chat window.
Northridge had placed ReadyChat’s click-to-chat button and proactive chat window feature on their Saskatoon division website (www.northridge.sk.ca/saskatoon). The primary initiative of Northridge’s live chat campaign was to create an incremental lift in overall online conversions, qualify chatters as sales leads, with the added value of enhancing online support while initiating builder-customer relationship. With these distinct goals in mind, ReadyChat and Northridge partnered to develop a chat campaign strategy to:
Instantly address customer inquiries. Working with their internal service representatives, ReadyChat developed a custom live agent knowledge base and script to be used when chatting with Northridge customers.
Provide an incentive for online visitors to be contacted. Leveraging existing promotions, ReadyChat trained its live agent team to provide online incentives that were directly related to the homes that visitors were interested while browsing the website.
Target and filter specific site visitors. ReadyChat’s live chat sophisticated software ensures site visitors will only be invited to one chat every 24 hours. ReadyChat live agents were instructed to chat with visitors who demonstrated signs of interests when they:
- Sat idle on a page for more than 60 seconds
- Clicked on multiple listings for pre-built homes
- Visited the Contact Us page but did not complete registration
Results
After 3 months of campaign optimization on segmented traffic, Northridge assessed the value of ReadyChat’s online customer engagement solution based on monthly sales leads, increase in show home visits and non-broker sales.
- 260% Increase in Monthly Sales Leads.
- 28% Increase in Show Home Visits.
- 10% Increase in Non-Broker Sales
This resulted in Northridge receiving more than three times as many leads in just three months of utilizing ReadyChat’s live chat service. The chat button was strategically placed in the header of the website for maximum visibility, so that if a user would like immediate service, he could ask by initiating a conversation with a ReadyChat live agent. The proactive chat window was set to appear only when visitors did not convert naturally through the website registration form. This acted as a last stance to engage with website visitors before abandoning the website completely.
Conclusion From Adding Live Chat
Northridge was experiencing a large number of website visitors abandoning their site prior to adding a proactive live chat feature. By adding proactive live chat, Northridge was able to reach out to casual website browsers and initiate a conversation with them about their needs instantly. Furthermore, having a team of trained live agents handling each visitor chat from their website allowed Northridge to provide live assistance 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (well after office hours), while saving thousands of dollars by outsourcing to ReadyChat.
“In the past, we had a hard time capturing our online visitor’s contact information. These visitors would come and leave without us knowing who they are, what they wanted and how we can help them,” said Rob Lozinsky, Sales Manager, North Ridge Development Corporation. “Now we receive twice as many prequalified leads with more information to help us better meet the needs of our customers.”
About ReadyChat:
ReadyChat is a premiere full-service live chat provider serving the real estate industry. The ReadyChat team helps new homebuilders and remodelers develop, manage, and execute an effective live chat system and service to help improve website lead conversion and overall customer satisfaction. For more information, please contact sales@readychat.ca.
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