WebSite101 Best of Show Award InternetWorld 2002
By Mike Banks Valentine

In a never-ending quest to make life easier for small business
webmaster, I'm fresh from the InternetWorld 2002 conference in
Los Angeles with a surprisingly valuable tool to benefit even
the little guy online. Even though internet trade shows rarely
provide the entrepreneur without megabucks anything worth much
discussion, this show delivered for David as well as Goliath.

I hereby award the "WebSite101 Best of Show Award" to Groopz,
for their stunningly simple and very powerful sales tool that,
although stretching the limits of affordability for the typical
SOHO (small office, home office) practitioner, it is definitely
a fit for those who are trying to decide whether office space
is justified. My answer, unless you MUST have a place to meet
the public or can't separate yourself from work at home, I say
DON'T rent that office yet! Instead get Oracle Small Business
Suite plus the Groopz service which together total just $200
monthly, far less than any worthwhile office rent might cost.
Even if you do rent the office, this combination can't be beat!

To many who choose to work from home, it just isn't possible or
there is little need to meet the public at a business location,
but now you can virtually greet them via Groopz live Java chat
and real-time customer greeting system. Their marketing tag-
line is, "Breathing Life into the Web!" It turns out that this
is not so far from the truth since business owners with Groopz
enabled site can now greet customers whenever they walk into
your WEB store, extend a "digital handshake" and offer the well
known greeting, "Hello, Can I help you?"

The Groopz enabled web store allows a business rep (or owner)
to know instantly that someone is shopping, know which page the
customer is on and how long that customer has been in the store
to make it possible to offer that "digital handshake" at any
time or simply monitor traffic and activity in real-time. There
are two ways for a conversation to be initiated. You can wait
until they click the "Contact live support" button or you may
proactively approach them after noticing they are on the FAQ
page looking for answers. A Java chat window appears on screen.

The time to initiate that contact may be when you see them on
the information or sales page of your most profitable product
or when they linger on one page for any significant length of
time. Just as a person expects a store staffed by salespersons
to be available to answer questions, so to would experienced
visitors of your site. Once they have had that live interaction
and refer your products to friends, they are very likely to let
that friend know that live support and help is available from
your business web site. If they leave with questions, they'll
very likely return to ask them rather than leaving frustrated.

This concept is not new, as HumanClick and LiveHelp have shown,
but it is now affordable for the little guy at just $95 monthly
for the complete service, which includes chat transcripts and
exportable logs for evaluation in WebTrends or other tracking
software. If watching the real-time information and graphing is
sufficient for you, you needn't even own analytic software as
all activity is visible on your site at any time with Groopz.

Last year at InternetWorld, my Best of Show award went to
CallButton.com for a service that allows customers to click a
button to summon a telephone call from a sales rep or web site
owner. While that seemed like the best solution at the time of
that review and still provides an excellent support solution,
it does NOT measure up to the power of Groopz live support nor
does it require a web site visitor to offer up any personally
identifiable information until they make the purchase.

My biggest objection to the Groopz service is the possible
intrusiveness of an unexpected live chat popping up unwanted
or unrequested. When I pointed privacy implications out to the
folks at Groopz, I was told, "The only information that is now
gathered by this live help tool is the very same data gathered
by WebTrends for analysis." While this is true, most users of
WebTrends don't watch as an IP address travels through their
site. As a privacy advocate, this feels voyeuristic to me, even
if all you are doing is watching an IP address move through the
site, I feel just a little uneasy with it. But those extra sales
might be worth a bit of uneasiness if customers aren't offended.

The Java chat window that pops up for the greeting may well
startle site visitors but, according to Groopz, experience has
shown that most just politely answser no, or click the chat box
closed as though it were a pop-up advertisement. Since you can
see what the visitor does, even though they close the window,
you'll know if they leave the site because live information is
still on your interface screen.

Research has shown that up to 80% of online shopping carts are
abandoned and although reasons are simply unavailable for this,
I'll assert that it is frustration over not being able to ask about
simple matters like battery life or term of warranty that makes
an online shopper leave without purchasing products already in an
online shopping cart.

Additional, albeit separate, research has shown if shoppers
could have questions answered, they would convert to buyers and
complete up to 80% of those abandoned transactions. Completing
of even 40% more sales would more than justify the $95 monthly
cost of Groopz.com service for many online businesses. Any one
of those contacts offer the opportunity to upsell too!

Groopz.com receives WebSite101 Best of Show award for this simple,
affordable sales tool for the small business webmaster. For a list
of runners-up and more contenders for the award, visit WebSite101.

About the Author

Mike Banks Valentine
Search Engine Optimization for the Small Business
http://WebSite101.com/Search_Engine_Positioning/
WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet
Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business on the Internet
http://website101.com/free_ezine_content/

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