Staying Social With Live Chat – Mini Case Study

When you hear the words live chat, I bet most of you think of a modest widget sitting somewhere in the corner of the site, used for customer support. Now, that’s not a completely incorrect image, however, the invention can be much more than that. See, there’s a specific type of the software intended for more extensive interaction, offering features your regular live chat doesn’t have. Here’s an inside look at the daily lives of three online communities, whose members come together to socialize in the digital realm.

For the purpose of this post, I asked three of our customers to share their experiences related to the use of Chatwee. They were kind enough to participate and provided answers to a set of questions I sent their way.

Nothing too fancy, I was genuinely curious about the ways in which members of these communities use the chat on a day to day basis. What follows are the three main areas we’ve covered, exposing the value created by social live chat in terms of online interactions.

Despite being quite basic, the three factors differ significantly from site to site. This can be ascribed to Chatwee being a multifaceted platform, offering many features. But enough of this tooting of our own horn, let the gentleman I got involved do some talking.

Chat use frequency

According to Ghyslain at VapingPost, a community of vaping enthusiasts, they have around 300 active chat users across several of their sites. Interestingly, he notes, you can easily pinpoint the conversation starters – the users driving the interaction. That said, the community still requires involvement on the admins part to keep it from getting silent from time to time. In Ghyslain’s own words, “once the involvement is there, the chat becomes a very powerful tool to increase page views and lower bounce rates”.

Eric, who manages the chat app at The Mike Gallagher Show says they use Chatwee to accompany their nationally syndicated radio talk show. “We have our users chatting every weekday during our live national show. I’d say we have somewhere between 75 – 100 regular users every day during the show.” Decent!

Joel over at the Finnish live auction site Huutomaa sees people coming into the chat rooms every single day. If they’re not participating in the site’s live events, they turn to casual exchanges. Essentially, they’ve grown a tight community, whose members are simply enjoying each other on a daily basis.

Discussion topics

As Ghyslain told me, “VapingPost is dedicated to vaping. All our users are discussing this topic with a preference for hardware reviews.” The community members are seeking each other’s opinions regarding particular e-cig models, liquids, and other closely related topics. The quest for information drives the daily interaction.

As far as Mike’s show go, “Debating the big topics of the day in America is what we do daily.” The issues covered include the media, the US president, and how current affairs affect the average listener. In Eric’s words, “Chatwee has brought the perfect platform to provide that outlet.” Stoked to hear that!

Huutomaa is probably the least single topic oriented of the sites. Joel noted that there’s a lot of variety, “For instance, today people talked about weather, the site’s birthday, shared some pics and YouTube videos. Oftentimes the conversation revolves around personal lives. Occasionally, there are surprise raffles and quizzes users like to participate in via live chat.” Many of the people visiting the site simply enjoy being social, playing quizzes and sticking around in the chat rooms while participating in auctions or browsing other websites.

User experience

“We got very good feedback so far. The chat brings life to our site and allows us to directly interact with the readers.” says Ghyslain. He says people started using the app pretty much instantly upon its installation. “Of course we have a comment system at the bottom of each of our articles, but the chat is live, which makes for a big difference.”

Eric told me he had some reservations when it comes to offering a live chat feature, but “it has been a big hit with visitors to the site. It’s the perfect companion to the video streaming feature.”

Huutomaa really is like a big family, which lead to the owners making some of the most loyal customers moderators in the chat. As per Joel, “the general user feedback has been very positive with people enjoying the add-on.”

In conclusion

As evidenced, group live chat performs an important social role in the online world. It helps communities centered around particular topics come together and discuss what’s important to them. Live chat renders physical location of the user irrelevant, allowing for real-time interaction.

It doesn’t have to be all-business all the time either. Having some fun and light-hearted conversation occasionally is what makes online communities thrive.

If the three cases covered here spiked your curiosity, consider signing up for your free-forever account and installing Chatwee on your site. There are no strings attached to trying it out. Finally, if you’re interested in the subject matter of any of the communities I mentioned, head over to their sites and become a member.

 VapingPost

The Mike Gallagher Show

 Huutomaa

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