Chat-Enable Your Web Site for Increased Traffic by Al Bredenberg



Al Bredenberg is the editorial director at Enterprise Interactive.

A marketing writer and editor with 20 years' experience, Al has pioneered tools for Internet marketing that are now standard throughout the online marketing industry.

Al can be reached
by e-mail at
ab@enterprise1.
com








The Reality

The Potential

The Difference

Test the Web
With Us

Advertising Available on Idea Site

Chat-Enable Your Web Site for Increased Traffic

by Al Bredenberg
Editorial Director
Enterprise Interactive

Developing compelling content is a challenge for any Web site owner. Harnessing the energies and interests of site visitors themselves to generate dynamic content is a compelling prospect -- and installing a live chat room on your site might well be the way to make that happen, with less cost than many expect.

Web sites with chat rooms commonly report average visits of 30-45 minutes. Montgomery Securities estimates that by the year 2000, people will be spending a total of 7.9 billion hours a year engaged in online chat. They also predict that live chat will generate a billion dollars in ad revenues.

Sometimes results are spectacular. Oliver L. Velez and Greg Capra launched the Pristine Real Time Trading Room on the Internet in June 1998. Within a few months they had several hundred subscribers in 32 countries, paying $525 a month each to exchange ideas, tips and even rumors in a real-time chat room.

"What chat has allowed us to do," Velez told the New York Times,"is to put slightly better than 400 people directly in our trading room, giving them direct access to just about our every thought and idea on trading opportunities that present themselves on the spot."

Besides giving users a place to interact, chat can be used to create a live environment for customer service and technical support, or to put a "human face" on your Web storefront. Egghead Software, for example, uses real-time communication software to place live staff in its online store.

Egghead is just one example of the heightened interest in chat as a business tool. Major players like Merrill Lynch & Co. and IBM are experimenting with chat as a way to interact more intimately with customers over the Internet.

There can be a significant downside to real-time chat, though. In some cases, uncontrolled chat can lead to hostile participants' scaring people away from your site, and even legal liability. Controlling access to your chat area by requiring registration ahead of time can help protect your image, but might actually increase your legal liability.

And in some cases, a quiet chat room can do more harm than good. "We set up a chat room for our beta testers to be able to talk to each other and to us," recalls the webmaster of an Internet software development company. "Our investors were watching closely, as well. And the worst thing that happened was that nobody had much to say. A few people dropped by once in a while, posted messages like 'Anyone out there?' and that was about it. Needless to say, the overall effect wasn't what we'd hoped for. Next time, we're going to increase the pool of people in the beta to pump up the likely number of chatters, and we'll be priming the pump ourselves, by chatting up a storm."

If you do plan to make the chat leap, talk to your host and ask if the Web server can handle the load. At a minimum, you'll need a Pentium 100Mhz, 32 MB RAM, and 30-60 MB of disk space. Most chat applications are written in Java, so your server needs to be Java-enabled. This is a bare minimum for fast-moving chat. But your Web host provider will most likely be a good source of information on chat software and chat-enabling your site.

Many hosting services include chat packages along with their e-commerce packages, while others charge additional fees for chat-enabling your site. The additional chat fees can range from a $25 setup fee and a monthly charge of $10-$20 a month to an additional monthly charge anywhere from $15 to $100.

TopHosts.com offers a searchable database of Web hosting services. Visit http://www.tophosts.com to learn more about hosting or to find the ideal hosting company for your Web site.


This article may be reprinted at no charge, provided it is printed in its entirety (including this message)
and with the URL link to http://www.tophosts.com.

return: idea site for business main menu