Live web site statistics, monitoring, and text chat

I can now offer a very powerful service for interacting with your web visitors and watching them using your web site in real time. It takes you beyond a simple static site to almost a virtual customer service employee working with you all day. It operates through some code added to your web pages (like other statistical tracking tools). This code sends data via the server to a piece of client software on your PC, that is "tuned in" to your web site and listening for new visitors (see snapshot below).

At a basic level, you get ordinary visitor statistics, but with the bonus of seeing it on your screen as it happens. It tots up paid-for visitors (e.g. through Google Adwords) separately, also flags hot prospects (people who have been several times, been on the site a good while and/or viewed many pages) and helps deter click-fraud. You can see which sources are bringing the most hits - you could ask it to highlight traffic from Ebay, for example - and its memory will even identify the true origin of a visitor who may have first found you some days earlier (many stats packages only tell you the last referrer).

If you have people browsing but not buying, you can send selected visitors a "chat invite", a window will appear on their computer and you can send text chat to see if they need any help. If you prefer, it can auto-invite people to chat after they have been on the site for a set time. Or you can just place a "click to chat" link on your site and wait for them to chat to you - try it on this site! Even if the chat feature is rarely used, its mere presence adds an extra level of confidence to your site. Customers can also request a telephone call-back and it can even alert you if your web site is down. Essentially it operates like a virtual "shop bell", and gives you the option to interact with customers if you wish. Recently my shop site got extra hits (see graph) as a result of a product mention on the front page of the BBC web site, so I was immediately able to see and react to this. It's customisable and can churn out shedloads of web analytics reports and graphs to help you understand your site better - for example if you are running Adwords on a restricted budget, it will show you how far through each day your cash goes.

I've tried a few of these tools before - LivePerson, BoldChat, AliveChat, etc. but sometimes these can be a bit intrusive for the visitor, and none are this comprehensive for the price. With other tools often the basic features are heavily restricted and the ability to customise your installation to your taste and view your reports is only available at extra cost. If you would like more information about using the "Whoson" service on your site, please get in touch. Licensing restrictions mean I can only provide this service for people whose site content is being hosted and managed through myself.