Crafty Live Support
One of the biggest problems with a new auction site is maintaining a level of use that gives comfort to a new visitor. What I mean by that is a people look for evidence of a an auction site being used to give them confidence that they can sell their items there. Another way to increase visitor confidence is to show them you are putting in a major effort. You may want to give the impression that the company behind the site is bigger then it actually is.
At one time live support was only for top-end site with the resources to throw at that but now with the help of a product called Crafty Syntax Live Help (CSLH) – ed. yes I know terrible name but the product works well and it’s open source too.
Live Support Window
Crafty Syntax Live Help (CSLH) is an open source live support solution that helps customer support with live help functionality that can be proactively pushed to visitors to your site or requested by the consumer. Crafty Syntax includes a large range of features to allow multiple operators, multiple departments and multiple languages to be used. Crafty Syntax Live Help is free and is programed in PHP with MySQL for the database. Other highlighted features include the ability to create your own questions, auto inviting visitors, referrer tracking, page tracking, ability to view what the customer is typing as they type, multiple chat sessions, sound alert, leave a message if offline, push URLs, quick responses, Customizable graphics, and multiple operators. runs on your server and is open source GPL.
I must say the web site and whole branding of this product doesn’t do it justice and a lot of people could be put off for that reason alone. Don’t be worried to much about the install it’s not difficult, you can quickly get up and running but one word of warning if your hosting is on a budget. In the admin section you’ll find all sorts of data collecting options. Keep an eye on the number you turn on as not only can it make accessing your admin area sluggish it could slow down your site while also collecting a lot of data can fill up your space rather quicker then you might think.
If you decide to go for the install make sure you also install the front-end client software. This is a really neat way of keeping a eye on whats going on on your site. Not only does it give you an easy start-up options on your computer, it also give a nice feeling inside as it pings away in the background telling you know someone has visited your auction site :-)
Design wise the icons and chat windows are fully configurable to meet the design of your site.
