Top Benefits of Chatbots in 2023: Automation and Discovery

You may be tempted to add a ChatBot or LiveChat widget on your website, but please do so with caution!

Should I use a chatbot for my coaching or membership website?

Chatbot tools are indeed great for providing additional communication channels and support for your prospects.

Here are a few benefits:

• ChatBots can solve common questions immediately
• Avoid losing visitors by routing them to the most appropriate page
• Capturing contact details of your leads
• Capturing contact details of your leads
• Increase confidence in your brand leading to more sales

But several of these applications will slow down your website which will hurt your rankings on search engines, reduce the effectiveness of your ads and provide a worse experience for your visitors.

ChatBot and LiveChat applications can slow down your website even when the vendor’s website claims it has no negative impact.

 

– Pol Cousineau, The Digital Navigator

These claims are often supported by stating that their software code uses “async” to call out JavaScript (don’t worry we won’t get more technical than this).

Async codes run in parallel to other code requests to load your web pages which means they DO slow down the loading speed.

Get a Site Speed Test & Audit

How to maintain loading speed when adding a chatbot for business

Install the ChatBot or LiveChat code (JavaScript) by either deferring it or adding a delay.

• Deferring JavaScript can be done by most caching plugins. You will want to test your pages while logged out of your website to ensure you didn’t break anything when setting this up. You will want to leave this to your developer.
• Delaying JavaScript can be done by some caching plugins or through a Tag Manager solution. You will still need to test your website to ensure it works properly.

When you defer the code, it means it will be one of the last things to load on your web page.

Since it is last, it won’t negatively affect the experience of your visitors or slow things down (as opposed to being run in parallel).

When you delay the code, you add a timer at which point the code will get loaded.

This could be earlier or later than the last element loaded depending on the length of your timer which is why this is different from deferring your code.

How to avoid slow loading speed when installing chatbots for business

Here’s an example to tie the whole concept together:

We configured the Drift chat application on a client website.

To avoid negative impacts on the loading speed, we use our secure tag manager that comes with our analytics tool in some of our website performance plans.

When the page loads, there is a five seconds delay at which point the Drift code is loaded.

That chat app works perfectly and the page stays blazing fast.

If you are considering adding new software or functionality on your website, schedule a complimentary consultation to get some recommendations on the best implementation method.

That’s it for today!

Learn how to reduce load speed times