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How do you convert that first-time visitor to your e-commerce site into a customer? For some Web sites, particularly those selling inexpensive, simple-to-understand products or services, the path from the initial visit to purchase can be relatively short.

However, if you sell more expensive or technically complex goods and services, you've no doubt found that persuading a Web visitor to become a customer can take time. The long selling cycle for these items doesn't mesh well with the short attention span of many online visitors.

How do you make it easier for your visitor to become a prospect and ultimately a customer? A live text chat service that allows interaction with online prospects is one way of breaking the ice. Visitors whose questions are satisfactorily answered in real time by your sales staff are more likely to purchase your products and services later on.

According to a Northstar Research Partners study commissioned by live chat vendor LivePerson, high-value customers who spend more than the average consumer are more likely to use live chat. The study says more people feel highly satisfied after receiving customer service via live chat (46 percent rate it 9 to 10 on a 10-point scale) than other forms of customer service such as a toll-free number (41 percent), e-mail support (31 percent), or online FAQs (24 percent).

Crafty Syntax Live Help offers a free yet surprisingly sophisticated live chat app that's relatively easy to install on your e-commerce site. While you will need to devote time to monitoring chat requests and answering visitor's questions, the payoff will come when higher visitor satisfaction leads to more sales.

Installing Live Help

If you want to run Live Help, ideally your Web host or server should support both the MySQL database and the PHP programming language. You can run Live Help with a text database, but performance may suffer, especially on larger sites with many visitors.

You start by downloading the zip file from the Crafty Syntax Web site, unzipping it on your PC, then uploading the unpacked files to your Web server.

You'll need to set up a MySQL database with an authorized user account and modify a PHP configuration file. Next, use your Web browser to access the Live Help wizard, which steps through the remainder of the installation. Clear, easy-to-understand instructions are bundled with the download and are also available on Crafty Syntax's Web site.

Integrating Live Help

To integrate Live Help with your site, you'll need to add a bit of HTML code to your Web pages. Click on Live Help's Department tab; select your options, such as the choice of online chat graphic; then click Create to generate the HTML code.

You can generate different code for each section or department of your e-commerce site. This allows you to assign different chat operators with specialized knowledge to each department.

When a chat operator is available, an icon (that you can customize) appears on the Web page inviting the visitor to chat by clicking on it. When no operator is available, the icon changes, inviting the visitor to send a message for a later e-mail response. You can develop a custom input form that asks the visitor to enter a name and e-mail address in addition to the question or comment.

Using Live Help

You'll need to create one or more chat operators by clicking on Live Help's Operator tab. You assign each operator to handle one or more departments.

Operators use a Web browser to log on to Live Help's menu, then click on the app's Live Help tab to start checking for chat requests.

You or your operators can leave the Live Help browser window open in the background while performing other work. An Auto Focus option brings the window to the foreground when a chat is requested. You can also have the software generate an audio alert.

You can establish a rule for automatically inviting someone to chat, such as five or more page visits.

Once in chat, you can type responses manually or answer by referring to a list of responses developed beforehand.

Live Help offers more than just chat. You can monitor visitors as they enter your site. You can view each visitor's IP address (or name if it's a former chat visitor) and referral source, such as a search engine and the keyword used.

Complete Reporting and Analysis

Live Chat is chock full of reporting and analytical capabilities.

As you would expect, it maintains a record of each online chat. It also records details about each visitor. This allows you to view valuable information, such as the number of visitors each month that are referred by other Web sites. Other database views let you see which search engine keywords bring you the most visitors, information that can help you plan search engine pay-per-click campaigns.

You can see which of your Web pages attract the most visitors and prepare a graph that displays page visitor trends daily for the past month and monthly for the past couple of years. You can also explore visitor paths, to see where they go from the first page they land on.

Is Live Chat Worthwhile?

Is Crafty Syntax Live Help worth it? Certainly, the app's price is right. Live Help is a free, open source application--however, the author does appreciate donations. Other online chat services such as LivePerson Pro can cost up to $100 per month per operator.

The greatest expense of operating a live chat service is for the time of the operators who respond to questions. Even though operators can do other work while running the app in the background, the demands on their time may be too costly to support the sale of goods or services with a low value or slim profit margin. That's a calculation only you can perform.

Richard Morochove is an IT consultant and writer. Send him questions about using technology in your small to mid-sized business via e-mail. PC World may edit your query and cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered.