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Offering a comprehensive research on the effectiveness of live chat technology, Bold Software has announced the second annual release of its report. Bold Software has combined the study with the company's recent benchmarking analysis to analyze the results.

Bold Software carried out some primary research and coupled them with benchmarking analysis to come out with certain conclusions. According to those, proactive chat increases chat volume by between about 40 and 100 percent; the median percentage of website visitors that accept proactive chat invitations is six percent; and 72 percent of those whose average online transaction is greater than $150 were receptive.

The BoldChat from Bold Software offers a real time website analytics engine that monitors your website connecting you to your visitors intelligently and instantly.

"This is our second year taking a granular look at live chat effectiveness, and we wanted to provide ecommerce sites with specifics around proactive chat," said Bold Software President and CEO Steve Castro-Miller (News - Alert). "It's not uncommon for us to hear from retailers a belief that adding proactive chat invitations will be intrusive to the online shopping experience for their visitors."

According to the findings, chatters that engage via proactive chats will convert at 6.3 times the rate of visitors who do not chat. Also, 60 percent of those who've engaged in a live chat interaction before were receptive, while 52 percent of those surveyed were receptive to receiving proactive chat invitations. The findings suggest that e-tailers should consider adding proactive chat to high-value pages of their site and combining offers (e.g., free shipping) with proactive chat is a successful way to engage visitors who've never chatted before.

In April 2010, the company launched BoldChat iPhone (News - Alert) App, which enables website owners to chat with visitors anytime, anywhere. Customers will be able to see a complete and real-time list of visitors who are currently on site and also invite visitors proactively. It will also be possible to chat with visitors using direct text interaction or intelligent canned messages from an iPhone.