The ability to chat live with website visitors has become a great way to answer pre-sales questions and provide support for many small business web sites. Choosing the best live chat software for a small business web site can be confusing, based on the wide range of options and prices for such products. Here are five questions to ask before selecting the best live chat solution for a web site.

1: Does the live chat solution provide a way to answer chats when you are away from the computer?

Some solutions provide for a chat operator to respond to website visitors from a mobile device such as a smart phone. The best live chat solutions provide for an interface that is not dependent on a specific phone such as an iphone or android but will work on any phone with a mobile web browser. The better solutions also will send a text message to phones to alert an operator when a website visitor has engaged in chat. One click on such a message can take the operator into the web browser chat in seconds, without the need to be tethered to a computer screen all day to provide support.

2: Is the chat software web-based or will the businesses need to install operator software on specific computers.

Advances in web technology make it no longer necessary to install and pay for software for each computer an operator will use to respond to live chat. The problem with these older solutions is that the costs can increase quickly, software will be often out of date, IT help is needed to install each package and make it work correctly and operators are required to use one machine each to interact with customers.

A web-based live chat solution will always provide users with up-to-date software, give operators the ability to log-in from any web browser (even a public one) securely and provide multiple logins for a much lower price. Web-based or cloud live chat software can be used by operators no mater if they are in New York, Los Angeles or Miami without anyone needing to visit the site and install the software.

3: Does the operator interface provide a way to speed up chat with prepared answers?

Choose a live chat software solution that provides an easy way to give operators answers to common problems and standard company positions to tough questions. Solutions can provide a detailed knowledge base that the company can easily grow over time as problems are solved, ways to search previous customer chats to answer current questions or simple responses to speed up chat when an operator needs to interact with multiple site visitors simultaneously. Obviously this type of interaction can be over done and feel robotic if it is over used, but common responses such as "give me a second and I will look up your record" can be efficiently stored as text and inserted into chat.

4: Can the business determine hours of operation for live chat within the software and how sophisticated are the settings.

The best chat software for business will provide a pre-determined way to determine when a website says that "operators are available" or "click to leave a message". Administrators should be able to choose if the company has after hour’s operators available or weekend support, and when those times are. A good system will only provide chat to visitors when a real live operator is logged into the system regardless of pre-set hours of operation. This is true even if operators are available to chat with visitors via mobile devices.

5: Are their hidden costs for features or does the software provide everything for a single price?

Before purchasing or subscribing to a chat package to chat live with website visitors, determine what features and how many operators are included in the price. Some software will provide a basic level package at an extremely affordable price for solo users. Some packages provide a full featured package with a reasonable number of log-ins at one monthly charge. There are other packages that provide a high level of marketing gloss around the same basic features as less expensive systems at an expensive al a carte pricing scheme.

The steps to take in choosing a package are to determine how many operators you will need to give access. Look for a software solution that provides a free trial period for live chat that can give you a good sense of how well the software works. Make sure the solution does not require a long term contract in case you find a better solution in the ever changing world of software.

Providing a way for customers from London to Tokyo to chat live with your company can quickly increase sales and decrease shopping cart abandonment. Choosing the best live chat solution for any company has become an easy and affordable process due to new cloud based services. Now any company can stay in touch with their customers from anywhere in the world just as if they had a show room in every location their customers are.