Most businesses are accustomed to doing business over the phone, by email, or through other services like Skype. But all too many companies are missing out on the untapped potential that an HTML chat room on their website can bring.
Since the dawn of HTML5, chat rooms have become easier to use and more accessible than ever before. Some can be embedded in any web page (including WordPress, Joomla, and Wix) and can also work as a floating toolbar. But apart from those two clear benefits, here are three reasons why this type of chat room will boost your business:
Communities, Customers, and Employees Love Live Chat
Who’d argue against being able to connect with a company you want to purchase an item from without having to listen to that horrible “on hold” music while you wait in a queue? Or how about speaking with other interested customers and fans to get their perspectives. And consider how nice it would be to pop a quick question to another employee without having to wait for an email response. These all increase productivity and can also lead to increased sales.
Communities, customers, and employees prefer live chat because it provides them with immediate access to the people they want to chat with. In fact, in a study conducted way back in 2016, eMarketer found the following:
63 percent of customers were more likely to return to a website that has an HTML chat room option.
62 percent reported that they were more likely to purchase from a site with live chat.
Why? Whether you’ve got a thriving online community, or not quite yet, the longer users stay on a site, the more likely they are to buy in the long run, and what better way to keep them there than to get them talking!
Reduce Operational Expenses with an HTML Chat Room
From a purely business perspective, having an HTML chat room can also save your company in two key areas:
Employee task time.
Phone expenses; especially for multinationals.
Having that live chat option reduces a company’s overall contact center costs because it reduces the average interaction costs. It also increases efficiency as multiple chat rooms can be operating at the same time, meaning fans and followers can be engaging in group chats with each other without you even needing to get involved.
Have Engaging Client Conferences
What better way to bring new clients on board than to interact in a group chat? A recent Gallup poll shows that 37 percent of workers in the U.S. have telecommuted, up from only 9 percent in 1995. As such, the ability to connect with employees and prospects depends more and more upon online solutions. Rather than stale and expensive three or four-way phone calls, with HTML chat, you can connect many people in many locations, be it in offices or the comfort of their own homes.
All-in-all, an HTML chat room is an affordable business solution which can reduce costs, increase sales, and create happier customers and employees.
But if you’re one who’s got to see it believe it, check out this live demo of one such HTML chat room, RumbleTalk, one of the leading chat room platforms for communities and which even has a seven-day free trial.
RumbleTalk’s new inText chat keywords feature vastly improves chat functionality. While before chats were a handy tool or addition to a website or virtual event, now they are a central way to share and communicate whatever information you wish via keywords.
What this actually means?
We all know what hyperlinks means. Those links are pointing to an URL somewhere on the web.
Intext URL links are actually the same links that the only difference is that the keywords are pre-defined by the chat owner. We will explain why this is a powerful tool.
So, first what you should know.
On a dynamic list of keywords (in the admin panel), the chat owner can define pairs of keywords and hyperlinks.
First, go to the admin panel, to the keywords section:
Now, create your own list of keywords.
Admins decide on the keywords selected. As administrator of the chat (owner only), one can choose any keyword he likes – any instance of the word is then highlighted and linked to without interfering with the rest of the conversation.
This even applies to private chats, without compromising their security. As for the links, hosts or admins set them, and they can be anything and point to anywhere on the web.
Whenever a certain keyword is mentioned in the chat window, it is highlighted in the chat runtime and linked to the address that was chosen in the back-end.
The default link is colored with the orange color. This can be changed by using CSS in case one needs to. Note, the keywords will not always show, there is a density logic that will decide if the keywords will be highlighted.
Education and InTEXT Chat Keywords
The people setting up keywords also decide how to best use the feature. Popular uses include the distribution of information, the placing of affiliate links, and the support of educational events and conversations. As for the latter, it is especially important to be able to present sources. Or in certain cases materials, like studies or books to back up some the information presented.
With RumbleTalk’s keywords feature, this is easier than ever. All it takes is the ten-second setup of a keyword and its corresponding link. And if for example, someone mentions an author in the chat, it can place a link to their works. The chosen keywords are not limited to individual words either—phrases and even sentences work just as well and can be defined as one keyword.
Online Events
Another popular use of the chat feature is for online events. These can include things like webinars or web-learning, and the keywords feature complements it perfectly. The service offers the option to get more keywords so the admin never runs out. And you can save, edit, and delete any keywords if necessary. This gives this tool even better flexibility. It means you can use word lists across multiple chats and they will not disappear when the session closes.
For professors or lecturers, this is also a good way to offer resources directly to the students and chat participants. You can use the feature to link to any file’s download page. This means that without interrupting the natural conversational flow, materials can be offered. Most importantly, no unsightly URLs required.
Extra Features
With inTEXT chat keywords, the highlighting of the defined keywords is subtle enough not to interrupt but obvious enough to make clear what it is. This is a far better alternative to traditional and interruptive link sharing.
Plus, it’s automatic. When you set up a keyword, it will automatically link every mention of the word. There is no further input required by the hosts or admins necessary. This means that with just a few minutes preparation, you can use an educational web chat in completely new ways. However, keywords do not have to be predefined. Since they are so quick to set up, all it takes is for someone with admin rights to go into the options and make a new one. You can do this while the chat is running to deal with unexpected topics or content changes.
With keywords, linking to content has never been easier. The automation and flexibility of the service make it accessible to everyone. It’s a perfect addition to an educator’s toolkit.
After several support emails with the same subject? asking us to explain the difference between chat software vs group chat vs live chat vs chat room. We decided to elaborate it a bit.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, chat is defined as “to talk with someone in a casual way” and also “to talk over the Internet by sending messages back and forth in a chat room.”
Let’s try to understand the different options in the chat arena?
It is a matter of terminology but much more. For example, if you need a public chatroom that allows you to log in using your social media credentials, then a private room will not be suitable for your needs.
Let’s talk about chat compare, The difference between the next 3 options
A – Group Chat
B – Live Chat
C – Chat Room
Note, each of those can be shown in two forms, chat software, or chat service.
The main difference is that a chat software will be installed on your server using your CPU, memory and other resources from your servers. A chat service is a chat that will show on your website but will consume the vendor of the chat resources (e.g, will not affect your server performance).
So, let’s start
The Evolution of Chat in Computer System
Our needs to communicate with other human being had initiated a chat system to be built along with the first computer operating system, UNIX in 1970’s. Talk program was built into UNIX system to allow people communicate each other using their user name as ID. Talk program only allows one-on-one chat.
The very first multi-user and chat room is a program called Talkomatic. The program was invented for the first time in 1973 by Doug Brown and David Wolley in University of Illinois as supporting tools for the University’s learning system.
Chatting has been so common in our daily Internet life. We are now using many different chat program and connecting with people around the world, as a chat program chat has been advancing very much since the very first talk program in UNIX system.
1. Chat, Instant Messaging and SMS
We have been so useful with chatting program. As a communication system has evolved and so has the chat program evolved. Chat by definition, according to PC Magazine is a real-time communication via keyboard between two or more users on a local network (LAN) or over the Internet.
Webopedia, the online tech dictionary also define chat as the same definition as PC Magazine: a real-time communication between two users via computer. Once a chat has been initiated, either user can enter text by typing on the keyboard and the entered text will appear on the other user’s monitor.
Most chat system nowadays allows users logging in to the system to enter a chat room and chatting with other people who have already been in the room. This allows a many-to-many chat room, as everyone in the chat room can send their message to other people.
There is a different term regarding chat, but actually, it means the same. The term Instant Messaging for most often is separated from chat, but instant messaging is actually a chat in itself. The difference between chat and instant messaging is that instant messaging is built to focus on the one-on-one chat.
In a mobile application, we have now so many instant messaging application. In the cellular technology, the very first instant messaging app is SMS. This technology then evolves into more advanced technology in mobile instant messaging. As the smartphone revolutionize the computing industry in the 2010’s, SMS has been replaced by the variety of instant messaging app.
As smartphone technology now converges with Internet and web technology, the chat must be able to deal with the convergence. The challenge for today’s chat technology is to be able to run and synchronize on both PC and mobile device. Fortunately, today’s technology enables us to build a web chat software that can be used in either mobile device such as smartphones and tablets, as well as PCs (HTML5 + Javascript).
2. The 3 types of chats
In the chat arena, we know there are three types of chat:
Private Group Chat
Live Chat
Chat Room
Private Group Chat. As the name depicted, the private chat room was meant to be a private conversation between a selected people. Usually, a small team needs this chat. Such as a group of stocks trader, a real estate sales associate, and small groups need this chat room.
With RumbleTalk you have the option to shift from private to social/group chat on the fly
One common needs for private group chat is the capability to share files. It is because the people in the private group chat usually are people with the same profession or the same interest. Therefore, the chat room is also functioned as a knowledge sharing tools. With the file sharing, capabilities, they can share any kind of files for information and knowledge sharing needs.
One additional advantage for teams is the fact that a user can enter when he has time and scroll up to see the group chat compare history, it is a huge time saver when managing groups.
Live Chat. This is the type used for customer service. A customer can be assisted by a company representative, who usually handle more than one visitor at a time. Companies with customer-oriented product and service, especially retail or FMCG company will surely need this chat. Live chat is useful as the supplement for telephone contact center.
Moreover, a company with an Internet-related product will need this live chat more than phone support. Since most customers are connected to the Internet, live chat is the most appropriate customer contact for such company.
Chat Room. This is the most common chat type and resembles a public space where people can talk to anonymous chatters. The public room can be placed on any website in any area of the site as long as the chat room is a public chat room.
When we enter the public chat room, we can see how many people have already been in the room and we can join the conversation with those people. In these chat room, usually, a conversation can be so hectic. However, we can also switch to private chat mode by inviting someone to a private room and chat privately. A good chat room will have this mode switching.
3. Chat Compare – Table of Comparison Between the Three
Features
Private Group Chat
Live Chat
Chat Room
Public
No
Yes
Yes
Switch to other types
Yes
No
Yes
Moderated
Yes
No
Somewhat
File sharing
Yes
No
Somewhat
Image insertion
Yes
Somewhat
Yes
Video Call
Yes
No
Yes
Audio Call
Yes
Somewhat
Yes
Emoticon
Yes
Somewhat
Yes
4. Why Is It So Confusing?
The complexity of human communication makes our communication method is different from one another. This also applies to the Internet communication, that is the reason for so many different chats compare available. All of them have a specific purpose and cater specific chatting need.
We can select the most suitable chat for our conversation needs. Visit RumbleTalk to learn more.
