One advantage of the internet is the immediacy of whole process. After customers find your site and what they are looking for, they can contact you by phone or use a contact form if you have one. In this day and age, with the wide spread use of I.M (instant messaging) software like MSN Live Messenger, customers are often quite comfortable using a text chat window to contact the business help desk immediately.

There are a couple of advantages with a live help system. For the website visitor, they can usually get to speak almost immediately with someone who can help them and answer their inquiries straightaway. Secondly, the business owner, who almost always has a computer in his or her office, can interact promptly with the visitor and quickly turn the visit into a customer.

I’ve tried various live help applications, but I’m currently using Digsby on this website and I must say, I’m very impressed. Online/Offline can be set and display in real time to avoid confusing site visitors and I can easily customise the chat widget to suit any site theme. There is an excellent WordPress plugin (WP-Digsby) to enable simple integration with a WP site and this works well.

Yet another example of the advantages of a W.P site - adding features that previously would have taken much longer to integrate and added significantly to the cost for the client is now a breeze.