BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

Acquisitions are nothing new. Your lawyer will call my lawyer or leave a message on my machine - or something like that. The problem starts with smaller acquisitions, where lawyer’s service would cost just as much as the cost of acquisition itself.

Last couple of days I was involved in the sale of my client’s web site. He sold his Russian food web site to another entrepreneur who already owns a brick and mortar store plus couple of related web sites. Obviously I cannot disclose the amount, but let’s just say it’s not large enough to think about involving lawyers.

The way the sale was proceeding was a good example of lack of knowledge on the part of small business owners. Small business owners don’t quite realize what is being sold and bought during the transfer of rights to the web site and it’s domain name. Some people think that the actual CD with web site code and database is the object of sale. Some think it’s a domain name. Some think it’s the login and password to administration area of the web site.

In either case while being the web master for the web site in question I became a third party who revised the contract, got the CD with latest back up of the web site code and database, passwords to admin area and e-mails.

Domain name and hosting transfer are still pending, as the client who bought the web site doesn’t clearly understand the difference between the two.

Popularity: 30%

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This is a part 4 of the live help and live chat service providers. Previous parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

As we were observing various web site live chat service providers, it has inevitably come to our attention that the origin of the product has huge impact on the product itself. Even though almost all of these services mostly targeted to English-speaking audience. For example, one of the live chat services developed in Poland had really horrible English product description - like a textbook example of “how not to describe your product”. On the other hand, another live support service, originated in China, has vast amounts of information available with trial downloads and support options that even include Skype.

123LiveHelp - this provider of live support software targets small business owners of a somewhat larger size then mom and pop shops. Hosted solution starts at $50 per month per seat for text-only version and $150 per month per seat for text + video. Single owned license costs $599 for text-only version and text+video live chat license would be yours to own for a whopping $1599. Obviously you need a special need for a video feed, but if you do - this might be a solution for you.

MyWebChatLive - despite the poor outlook of the web site, this live help service claims to have a top-notch connectivity to tier 1 data centers. Not sure what that means, but in any case if you want to give it a shot - the pricing will encourage you to do so: 2 concurrent operators with all features enabled will set you off for only $17.95 with $2.95 for each additional operator. There is, of course, 30-days money back guarantee, free trial and other nice perks. What I liked about this service is that the desktop clients (again - Windows only) has that distinctive Vista/Office 2007 look. Among cons is the fact that service is configured for one web site only. Unfortunately, I was unable to test drive the service, since the live chat client download constantly timed out and the live support was - you guessed it! - unavailable.

(To be continued…)

Popularity: 22%

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This is part 3 of the live web chat and live help review. If you missed first two they can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.

Most of live help service providers fail to impress for one little reason: their sales isn’t available. While trying to get in touch with anyone at some companies that provide live web chat I discovered that live chat sales reps were unavailable. The very tool they are trying to promote isn’t being used. And I am not talking 24×7 service, this is perfectly business time at around 10 - 11am EST. Besides everything else, this leaves an impression of a one-man shop behind the service, which (while being totally normal business model) raises the question of reliability.

Now, let’s move on to the reviews.

HelpOnClick - very simple live help and live chat service. While perfectly functional and quite inexpensive it lacks visual appeal for both web site itself and chat windows/operator screens (and it also lacked live operator when I needed it). While looking at operator screen I couldn’t help but think that it was designed by a programmer, not a web or interface designer. It very functional yet inconvenient to use for people who lack enough computer training - they simply look at wrong places in order to find a required controlling mechanism. Pricing varies from $19 for single operator license per month to $49 per month for Deluxe plan with unlimited number of operators.

SalesRep - offers hosted and outsourced flavors of live chat service. The hosted live help service starts at $8.95 per month for 1 seat, 3 seats will cost you $27.95 and 20-seat corporate license will set you back for $87.95 per month. It must be noted that certain sections of admin console for this service looked horrible in my Firefox. Overall experience of using this live help service provider was somewhat troublesome. The chat window (on both customer and operator side) kept blinking while refreshing all the time, sometime even preventing customer from typing. We didn’t notice any such problems with most of other services.

(Continued - Read Part 4 of the Live Chat Services Review)

Popularity: 20%

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• Live Tech Support - Click Here (Part 4 of the review) (February 16, 2008): This is a part 4 of the live help and live chat service providers. Previous parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. As we were observing various web site live chat service providers, it has inevitably come to our attention that the origin of the product has huge impact on the product [...]
• Live Tech Support - Click Here (Part 2 of the review) (February 14, 2008): This is Part II of the review -see Live Tech Support - Click Here (Part I of the review). Most of the live web site chat services look very generic. Don't get me wrong, they all look different and unique, but when I look at their web site my experience of web developer tells me that [...]
• Live Tech Support - Click Here (Part 1 of the review) (February 14, 2008): Last couple of days one of our clients and I spend quite some time researching providers of online chat service. This is one of those services where a visitor of your web site can click on the image with a smiling lady and supposedly chat with a friendly (or not so friendly) sales person. The advantages [...]
• ZenCart or osCommerce? (January 14, 2008): Elaborating on the previous post (WordPress or Joomla?), next often asked question that we at Zealus Web Design see is which shopping cart should one use?This one is just one notch easier. First - we already know that customer wants a shopping cart solution. Second - he is aware that whatever choice he makes is [...]