Http://websitechat.net

http://websitechat.net - Live Support Chat is a hosted service which provides easy integration of chat facility into your website.

Please critique design, usability, SEO, everything actually.

Feel free to sign up and test our chat service to it's fullest.

Thanks!

Hi. You seem to have ticked all the boxes as far as building the site and the design go. I like the look and feel of the site. It 'feels' professional. I think you have got the site spot on. This seems to me to be a very saturated market but we are not here to criticize your business plan!! As i said there is a lot of competition. On the plus side - there doesn't seem to be any free hosted solutions so i think you could be on to a winner with your pricing plan for the lower end of the market. This falls over however for a large number of users because you can get packages that offer say 100 users for a set price which would amount to alot under your pricing. I think this is ideal for small businesses though. What SEO have you actually done? if you don't mind me asking. Have you considered what keywords you will be targeting etc??

p.s. this is just my opinion. As i said, can't fault the site really.

@eddie21leeds - thanks for your post . Our SEO aims at the following keywords: "website chat", "live support", "live support software", "live chat". So far we have done SEO via three channels: 1) software download sites (Softpedia, download.cnet.com etc.) - best source of traffic so far, 2) blog reviews - second best source of traffic, 3) website directories - not much traffic, but hoping to build our PR. Would you be able suggest to any SEO tips for our site?

Off the top of my head... start/incorporate a blog? Google rewards fresh, regularly updated content. That would be a good start. Not sure what you could blog about!! Updates, new features, offers, new clients (with their permission etc..). Are you on hotscripts.com?? If you do some proper research you could find some long tail keywords and incorporate them into the blog. Other than that you need backlinks. The key is not to 'spam' for links. You need to create some sort of 'linkbait' i.e. intro offer , so people will write about / link to you. Of course you can encourage this by contacting webmaster related blogs etc. Does this help?

edit: sorry ... you already covered blog posts. I would concentrate on this. Do you mean blogs you write yourself or people have picked up on it? Perhaps compose a press release type email if you haven't already... For maximum impact you need a USP. I beleive your product offers value to webmasters so i would build on this. The softpedia traffic is going to be very stable and there is not much you can do to boost it. Your target should be to boost blog posts and links etc to your number one traffc source. Natural search traffic comes with time. some of your keywords are very 'general' and i would be suprised if you rank well in the near future. I would look in to long tail keywords. The traffic is smaller but the results are a lot quicker. To get a footing in google i think you will need a blog on your site so you can play about with different keywords in <h1> titles etc... and of course - good quality backlinks.
HTH

edit 2!: Bit of a long shot but you could contact web developers etc and try and get them to include your software as one of their services. Maybe you could offer them a bit of room for profit on the pricing... If you could do this then even if you dont make sales you would have links from web dev related sites... Maybe worth a shot??

@eddie21leeds - thanks again for your post and useful tips. I am aware google likes frequent new content, but on the other hand don't like the idea of adding "Blog" just for the sake of google (and other SE). I can't think of anything interesting to blog about (maybe apart from few new features we will add in next 2-3 months, but what next??...).

I was thinking about adding a forum where our customers could post their "Success stories" (also to promote their own sites), ask "Support" questions etc. Do you think it might be a good replacement for a blog from SEO perspective?

Press release: yes, this is on top of my "to do" list. Would you be able to recommend some good (free) distribution channel?

Have you maybe had a chance to sign up and take a look into a "Control Panel"? I would really appreciate any comments on usability of our User Interface. As a little "thank you" for your time spent, I would like to offer free (for life) chat operator account(s) - if it is of any user for you. After signing up, just open "Support ticket" and paste link to this forum thread. BTW: The same applies to anyone else wishing to comment on our service (valid under 1st Feb. 2010).

Wow thanks... i will bear that in mind!! A forum is a viable alternative to a blog but not as good. I have found that to start a forum you need to spend time puttin 'posts' in there yourself to get the ball rolling. Also you will be giving people free reign which can be dangerous. You will have to moderate the forum which will probably take as much time as writing a few blog posts a month. The point with the blog was that it gives you the chance to plant keywords... i suppouse you could do the same with a forum but it won't be as effective. I dont suppouse you have implemented a content rating for your site??
http://www.fosi.org/icra/
erm... I'm just learning about this myself. Basically you give your website a content rating via the HTTP header and it then passes through content filters... child safety/work based filters... not a major issue but forums are bocked by a lot of content filters.
I think i forum would be more high maintenance than a blog if it gets busy.
It's your call. I wouldnt worry about the content rating... just making you aware. A suppourt forum would be a good idea. If you are set against a blog then maybe just tyr to periodically add some content. again, just to test keywords etc... this could be expanding the F.A.Q. or announcing new features etc...
Have you identified your competition and analyzed their SEO?? If you find the competition is weak then a forum could do the world of good. It's good to out do the competition.

As for the press release. I'm not too sure about that. The only way to get a reliable mailing list for free is build it yourself. Doing this you need to be up to date on the CAN-SPAM act. Other than that... like i said before just manually contact web dev sites...

I will have a look when i get a chance. I am suppoused to be doing coursework!!

erm... bit cheeky but i bet the others do it -
Find some keywords that somebody looking to buy your product would use (with low, poor quality competition).
Register keyword rich domain names.
Repeat what you have done on multiple domains.
Sell the same product through multiple domains...
Just a thought!!
Let me know what you think.

... I was thinking about this recently. However I can see a potential problem with "duplicate content" penalty. As I will end up with multiple domains (websites) with exactly the same content - which is bad from SE perspective AFAIK. Or shall I not be too worried about that?

Of course I can try to make each site different but this means more work and more time to invest

No you are quite right. The other sites would have to have their own content.

and of course you would have spammy looking domains... There are a number of routes you can go down to boost traffic and sales. I cant say what will be most effective but all will require effort on your part. It's up to you which way you go.

Out of interest... how long has the site been live? I ask because you are not in the top 100 for any of your keywords...

Site is live since 1st Nov. "website chat" is on Google's SERP #2. "website chat .net" is top result. Indeed other keywords are still performing rather poorly...

ahh yes i see it now. I was using an old tool. That's not bad. If you are happy that people looking for your product use that term then u could concentrate on that... I cant really say what to do as i am still learning in this area. Has this helped you make a decision where to focus your efforts??

I do not like the design and it seems difficult to use.
Anyway is better than the last used by me:
tools.geek-tools.org

Please compare them and share your opinion

If you want your website reviewing then please start a thread.

Good idea... thanks