Driving a user’s attention to your sales funnel has been more challenging than ever – with the generally increasing amount of information, visitors tend to get overloaded with information making it more difficult to captivate their attention.
Whether you’re a small-time or large-scale business, providing real-time support is one of the best ways to get that attention, to lead them to the right sales funnel, and increase their chances of making a purchase. With that being said, the importance of having a chat API incorporated into your mobile app, an e-commerce store, or website plays a crucial role.
One-on-one chat support has increased sales percentage, aside from the fact that it also helps build trust and rapport with the customers. When customers trust the people behind the company, they are more likely to purchase because their inquiries are answered in real-time. Their questions are clarified on the go, making live chat support one of the most important features every website has.
The question is, which chat platform or API works best for you? From the thousands of APIs out there, how will you know which one suits you most? If this is the first time you are hearing about this, a pre-build chat feature extension or API lets you integrate chat support to your website with only a few clicks of a button. There are no complicated steps to follow, and less on the technical details. This way, you can get your chat app up and running in no time.
Choosing an API for chat application over designing everything from scratch saves you many resources – time, money, and effort. Since businesses have different needs, one must choose an API that can provide all the functionalities you’re looking for from your chat app.
While there are possibly hundreds of different chat apps to choose from, knowing what to look for spares you from the trouble and from the possibility of getting the wrong API. To help you further, here are some tips to take into consideration when choosing a chat API. Whether you’re looking for a standalone app or something that you can integrate on your website, listed below are some essential factors you should pay attention to.
- What Mobile Platforms Do You Intend to Target
For mobile platforms, what are you targeting? Android users, Apple users, or both? This is very important when doing your search and should be on the top of your list. Not all APIs offer both – some are only available on one mobile platform. Whichever you prefer, make sure that you check which among these APIs are offered in both platforms, if that’s what you prefer.
Why is this important? At one point or another, aside from integrating the API on your website, you’ll also have to make sure that the chat feature is available on mobile devices. You don’t want to miss out on this because most of your customers and potential buyers will be using their mobile devices. Recent studies suggest that people now access websites and make purchases from their mobile phones.
You don’t want to take these users for granted by skipping the live chat feature for mobile devices. Remember, your goal is to provide live and real-time support to everybody requiring assistance, whether they’re accessing your site from their computer or smartphone.
- Chat Security
Another important factor to consider is the chat feature. Some messages may require confidential information and sensitive data. You want to give your customers the peace of mind that everything that’s been sent through your chat channel remains safe, private, and secure. You can’t risk some essential information leaking. You might lose credibility and your customers’ trust. Find one that encrypts messages and ensures that all messages sent to and from the app remain private.
- Does the Chat API Offer Scalability?
Scalability is a crucial feature you should be looking for from a chat application, API, or extension. Small-scale businesses might not see the importance immediately, but at one point, you’ll see growth in your company. You’ll get more visitors, more customers, and your chat application needs to keep up with your company’s growth. With that being said, the API needs to be scalable and can be adjusted based on what your current website’s demands are.
- Is It Customizable?
Customization is the ability to change key areas that are essential when choosing a chat app. Besides the ability to add branding to your chat, you can also customize the workflow responses and even change buttons according to your brand’s colors. Personalizing the chat interface gives you more room to add and remove buttons or functionality, keeping the chat interface clean. No unnecessary buttons or features distract your visitors, so you can focus more on providing support and offering assistance to your customers.
Another reason why customization is an important aspect is that you’ll have a variation of people with different needs when you receive visitors. You need to be able to provide them with an interface and chat features that are based on what their needs are.
- Added Features
The basic chat features, being able to exchange messages, and direct customers to the right channel are all great to have. But it’s also a bonus if there are other added features such as the ability to send and receive files, images, or even voice messages. By sending and receiving files, you can request or send files and information to and from the customer in real-time.
Other features most businesses look for also include read receipts, chat notifications, and even chatbots. Chatbots are a seamless way to enhance chat workflow by providing a series of answers to commonly asked questions. This way, you can minimize repetitive chat requests yet still provide real-time solutions to your customers.
Choosing the perfect chat API for your platform may seem like a lot of work. It does, but by considering the five points listed above, you’ll surely be able to filter out the bad ones and have a few good ones on your list. Compare rates, pricing, and features – read reviews, find out what other businesses think about the API, and take it from there.
