2 Ways to Add Live Chat to Any Website (In Minutes)
What’s the easiest way to add live chat to your website?
There’s a lot of hard work that goes into building great live chat software, but this doesn’t mean it’s hard to add it to your website. Quite the opposite!
Live chat can increase your conversions by as much as 48% -- all with a few clicks and a few knowledgeable customer support reps.
We’ll show you the quickest ways to add live chat functionality to any type of website, whether it is a CMS like WordPress, a Shopify store, or a custom-built site (in minutes).
Want to skip the step-by-step instructions and install live right now on your website? Add it now.
Table of Contents
Why Add Live Chat to Your Website?
Before we find out how to add live chat to your website, let’s take a quick look at _why _you should add it.
1. Capture More Leads
Simply adding live chat to your website can increase the number of leads you generate by 40%.
Plus, it’s super easy to put lead generation on auto-pilot with live chat. You simply have to set up a triggered message that pops up when a visitor spends a certain amount of time on a specific page.
For instance: did a visitor spend two minutes on your pricing or resources page? Create a custom message asking if they need help choosing the right product or asset for their needs.
2. Get More Sales
Live chat can help you close more sales. In fact, 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a website that has live chat, while 63% of shoppers would return to a website with live chat.
3. Provide Real-Time Customer Support
Who likes to wait on hold, or send dozens of emails to different support agents? No one!
A whopping 79% of customers say they prefer live chat because they can get immediate answers to their questions.
Live chat helps you solve customers’ issues in real-time using a single touchpoint. This is exactly what your customers want.
4. Solve Problems Faster
Live chat is the fastest way to help your customers or leads. It’s not just about customer support issues.
It takes an average of 2 minutes and 40 seconds to respond to a live chat. But you can shorten that significantly by using canned responses -- you could go as low as 40 seconds!
Did you know that you can set up canned responses for any situation with JivoChat? Give it a try, it’s completely free!
5. Increase Engagement
Not sure what could be improved in your buyer or support cycle? Why not ask the people who know best -- your customers?
Live chat is the perfect way to collect feedback at the right time -- while your customers are still on your website and it’s fresh in their minds. This way, you can easily identify weaknesses in the sales and support process and also improve loyalty as customers feel their feedback is valued.
2 Ways to Add Live Chat to Your Website (In Minutes)
You don’t need a web developer to install live chat on a website.
In fact, it only takes a couple minutes to add a chatbox to your website and you can do it yourself!
1. Add Chat to Any Website with a Line of Code
Step 1: Create your free account on JivoChat:
As soon as you have an admin account, you will have access to the control panel.
Step 2: Enter the admin name and the name of the website where the live chat will be installed. You can also add a phone number (optional).
Step 3: Download the agent app for desktop or mobile. You can access it through your web browser or skip this step entirely and download it later.
Step 4: Copy the chat code and install it on your website (or have your admin do it -- you can send it to them via email directly).
Want to do it yourself? Check out our installation guides for the most popular CMS platforms here.
You can always retrieve this code after the registration process is complete. Don’t worry if you misplaced it; you can always find it here.
That’s it - congratulations! You have added live chat to your website. You’re ready to chat with your customers using the agent app or the JivoChat browser-based app.
2. Add Chat to Any Website with a Plugin or Integration
JivoChat can be integrated with almost all the popular CMS and ecommerce platforms: Shopify, WordPress, and Wix, but also with BigCommerce, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, PrestaShop, and others.
You can also connect it to your CRM or your favorite analytics tool.
Add Live Chat to WordPress with a Plugin
Option 1: Automatic Installation
To get started, go to search for the JivoChat Plugin in WordPress or find it here directly.
If you choose the search method, please note you will find two plugins under JivoChat. Choose the first one ("JivoChat - a Live Chat for Your Site").
Click on "Install Now" and then activate it.
On the left WordPress navigation menu, click on JivoChat, add your login credentials and then click on "Install JivoChat now".
After you see the "Congratulations!" message, you can install or launch the Agent App and start receiving live chats!
Option 2: Install the JivoChat Code in the Footer File of Your WordPress Site
From your WordPress admin panel, go to Appearance >> Editor.
Select the file called «footer.php» and edit it.
Add the JivoChat code before the </body> tag.
Make sure to save the settings by clicking Update File.
The JivoChat code is available in the JivoChat app, in the Installation section: Manage -> Channels -> Settings -> Installation.
Add Live Chat to Shopify with a Plugin
eCommerce sales and support success depends a lot on speed, hence the necessity of having live chat on your online store. This is why we have created a special Shopify plugin to help you install it quickly, without working with snippets of code.
Here’s what you need to do:
Step 1: Open the JivoChat web app or any of our desktop apps and log in.
If you don’t have a JivoChat account yet, you can skip this step (see how above). You can always create the account later
Step 2: Go to Shopify and open the JivoChat app in AppStore
Step 3: Click on "Get" to start installing the application.
Step 4: Don’t have a JivoChat account yet? No problem! It can be automatically created using the same login credentials you have for Shopify.
You will receive your username and password via email.
Step 5: Already have a JivoChat account? You will receive the option to install the app.
All that’s left to do is for you to choose an existing channel in your JivoChat account from which you want the code to be installed on your website.
Already seen this bar?
It means that your Shopify store is chat-ready! Enjoy!
Customize and Configure Your Website Chat Widget
Now that you have added live chat to your website, let’s take care of making it look native and in-line with your branding and tone of voice.
The website chat customization has three main goals:
- Supporting your business goals
- Helping you stay "on-brand"
- Making customer interactions faster and conversion-oriented
Change the background color, as well as the text color with a few clicks:
The position of the widget (left or right) is just as easy to change:
Add more personalization to JivoChat with a custom offline message that your customers will see when no agent is online or with pre-defined canned messages that agents can send with a single click.
Once your live chat widget matches your website design and branding, look at the more advanced options.
For instance, triggers can be a massive business asset when used right.
When should the chat window open and what should the message be? You can create a single message that greets everyone, just to let them know there’s an agent on standby should they need any help.
Or, our favorite option, create custom triggers. For instance, if you notice that a visitor lingers on a page for several minutes in a session or comes back to the same category, you can ask:
Want to go even more in-depth with your personalization? You can create your very own custom widget, with your own proprietary colors and look. It’s quite easy:
Step 1: Download the initial files here.
Step 2: Copy the "jivosite" directory from the archive to the root directory of your site.
For example, if you use shared hosting it will be: …/Public_html/your_domain/jivosite
Step 3: Make sure that the initial script code is available.
Step 4: Add the code between the <head> and </head> tags on each page of your site:
<link href="/jivosite/jivosite.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="/jivosite/jivosite.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Step 5: Make sure that the JivoChat code has been added to your website.
That’s it! Now you’ve got your very own custom live chat widget added to your website.
Connect Chat and Facebook Messenger
Offering unitary communication across all your channels is crucial for making your customers feel right at home. With JivoChat, you can bring all your communication platforms under one roof.
Agents can use a single dashboard to connect with customers and reply to messages incoming from Facebook, your website, calls, and emails.
You’ll be able to connect with more leads and customers, since you can engage with them on the platform of their choice, be it Facebook, Telegram, or another channel.
You can connect live chat to Facebook in three easy steps:
Step 1: Go to your JivoChat dashboard
Step 2: From the communication channels menu, select Facebook
Step 3: Start receiving messages from Facebook directly in your JivoChat app!
Ready to Add Live Chat Functionality to Your Website?
There are few things easier and faster than leveraging live chat for more sales and better communication with prospects and clients.
Ready to add live chat to your website? Start here and don’t worry about not being able to complete the installation on your own. We’re here for you 24/7. Just look for the live chat widget on our website.
Sign up and try JivoChat for yourself!