The placement of a live chat button, also known as a live chat widget, has a significant impact on your website's conversions, user experience, and customer engagement. When a prospective or current customer lands on any page of your company website, they should have a clear path to engage for support and assistance, and the user experience should be simple and evident. Boosting conversions, amplifying customer engagement, and enhancing user experience are just a few of the many perks you can get when you properly position your live chat button.
Where should I place a live chat button?
Live chat is a real-time customer touch point on your website, the more visible the placement, the better this is for conversions, customer satisfaction, and user experience. The recommendation is to place your live chat button at the bottom right corner of your website or in the footer, as these are familiar and usual spots where people naturally notice and navigate to.
The idea behind this is live chat only works if people know about it. On any page of your website, your customers may reach a point where they have questions. Once that question enters their mind, there are only 2 possible outcomes:
- The visitor finds an answer.
- The visitor cannot find an answer, gets frustrated, then leaves.
We all want our websites to be designed in such a way that any possible question can be answered right there on the page. If a website visitor can’t find the answer they were looking for, having a visible live chat button will immensely increase the customer experience by expediting direct contact with your chat agent team to help with questions. Offering live chat on every website page allows for a customized interface where you can tailor the chat to fit the needs of your customers and what they are searching for at that moment.
The live chat button should be accessible to your website visitors and customers 24/7. If your website visitor or customer must leave the page when they are on to look for help, your bounce rate could be high. Visitors and customers become more frustrated with every click if they cannot find what they’re searching for, until they reach a point where it is not worth their time to continue looking and they leave your website. Anticipating that need and allowing your website visitors easy access to you is an excellent way to build customer loyalty, ultimately increasing your online conversions.
Live chat button placement - UX design best practices
The placement of a live chat button at the bottom right is a conventionality among online users who are accustomed to seeing it there. People’s eyes are naturally drawn to the right corner of a website page, and if there is a visible, hovering chat button positioned in that area, there is a good chance your online visitors will see it and there is an opportunity for your company to provide an engaging customer experience.
You could alternatively or simultaneously place a live chat button or a link at the footer of your website. Since it is a common area where users flock to if they are searching for ways to connect with your business. This alternative placement in the footer is a good way to integrate a chat button into your website without being too abrasive or disruptive to customers’ user experience on the rest of your website.
Here are additional recommendations on UX design best practices:
Use a floating button as a shortcut to chat
Create a simple user experience in your site navigation for visitors by offering the chat option as a floating button to capture interest. Aim to consider common intuitive actions from users when picking where to place your live chat button. Currently, most online users have been familiarized with website floating elements that capture engagement, such as a live chat button, an invitation or a pop-up window at the bottom right-side corner.
Consider using color to grab's user attention
Aim to design the chat button to be different from the color of the website background colors. Use a contrasting color within your brand color palette and with a high contrast relative to the background. When designing the look of your live chat button, be sure it’s not too distracting where it detracts from the rest of the website page contents. The design of your chat button should match your company’s website brand colors. For example, using a stock image of chat agent could be considered distracting and take away from the rest of your website content.
The colors should be simple yet bold so that the chat button stands out on the page and website visitors can easily find it and interact with chat agents. You want to use 2 or 3 brand colors in the chat button design, but make sure it doesn’t blend into the page as this can detract from having the button in the first place and make sure it’s not too big as this can overwhelm the rest of your page contents.
Identify pages of your website where people would need help
Aim to target certain pages to further optimize the user experience and user journey on your company’s website. Contact Us or Help Center pages are an ideal place, for example, to have an additional call-to-action (CTA) button for customers to click and start a chat conversation.
The additional live chat CTA button, could be interspersed throughout the page within the text of the body content, it can also be placed in the center, or at the top of the page by the navigation bar. You want it to be easy for customers to find the chat button or CTA button linking to the live chat window, this will help increase engagement and customer satisfaction with your online prospects and customers.
For eCommerce websites, adding a hovering live chat button during an order checkout, is very helpful for customers who may have last minute questions or doubts before making their purchase. By leaving the door open for chat engagements, you are lowering bounce rates and raising customer service levels.
Use a clear label to identify the chat button
UX writing is all about harmoniously guiding users within a website’s product or service information and assisting them with interacting with all the site design elements and text. A text label on a chat button has an extreme impact on the user experience. For example, some websites label the chat button as “Ask a question”, instead of naming it as “Chat now”, “Chat with us”, or opting out of this text label with an automated chat prompt stating “Send us a message”. The “Ask a question” can be misinterpreted by site visitors as a channel for sending an email to the business or perusing through FAQs.
Increase in conversions
Finding the best place for the live chat button is just the start of the benefits. Providing your online customers a straightforward route to communicate with your business via live chat could potentially boost your conversions. According to an Invesp survey, website visitors and customers who participate in live chat tend to spend 60% more per purchase. Visitors who engage with a live chat agent are 2.8 times more likely to make a purchase. In truth, 38% of customers reported making a purchase following a satisfactory chat session with a live chat agent.
Key takeaway
The placement of the live chat button in your website pages is essential for a strong user experience, driving conversions, lowered bounce rate, and increased customer engagement. Give your customers an easy way to contact you.
