6. august 2021 | Artikel
The Essential Chat Glossary
This glossary contains explanations of all the abbreviations and terms that we use daily in the chat world, but which for some may be unfamiliar. If you are completely new to the field, you can start from the beginning, but if you are partially familiar with the universe, you can simply click directly to the ones you want to learn more about or brush up on.
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A
A/B-test
A/B testing, which is also called split testing, is when you test the exact same thing several times with different variabels in order to find the perfect recipe. In chat context we use A/B testing to test which elements in a chat that work best for a specific customer segment.
Adwords
Adwords is Google's online advertising platform. The platform allows businesses to pay to get their advertisements displayed in Google's search engine or in other of Google's affiliate sites. Businesses pay-per-click which means that when users click on the advertisement, Google will each time get a certain amount of money.
Agent picture
An agent picture is the small round picture that appear in a chat when it opens. It can be a picture of the actual person you are chatting with, a fixed picture of some employees from customer service or it can the a company logo. When Weply develops a chat for at customer, the company can decide which picture they want to show in their chat.
Application programming interface (API)
An application programming interface is a program that gets several programs or apps intertwined. You can say that an API is an interpreter who makes two different types of software able to communicate. At Weply we use an API to deliver leads into our customers' CRM systems so they do not need to type something twice manually.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence is the term for the field working with simulating human intelligence in machines. Artificial intelligence only works based on huge amount of datasets. Once you have collected a fair amount of data you can feet an algorithm with information that allows the machine to act more like a real human being.
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Backlink
Backlinks are links to external websites on your own website. You can for example create a blog post where you link to other businesses or articles which will improve you SEO.
Best practice
Something being best practice basically means that you see a way of doing things as the most efficient and succesful.
Bounce rate
A bounce rate is a measurement for how many enters a website and leaves it right away without clicking into a subpage.
Buyer persona
Creating a buyer persona is when you make a representation of a potential customer based on market research or your own collected data. Based on buyer personas you can easier build your strategi on how you will approach and attract future customers.
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Call to action (CTA)
The term call to action is when you want to get someone to click on something. This can e.g be pictures, buttons, or links, that has a specific message that encourage the visitor to make an action. This could be a button saying "Get your free e-book here" or "Get 7 days free" which temp the visitor to click on it.
Content management system (CMS)
A content management system is a software that makes it easier to put content online and organize your entire website. The most common CMS is WordPress which is used for around 1/3 of all websites in the entire world.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Optimizing a conversion rate is when you work with increasing the number of conversions made by a website visitors. This is often a longer process and usually takes a lot of time and different tests.
Cost per lead (CPL)
You measure a cost per lead in marketing and sales campaigns. You calculate the CPL to measure campaigns' efficiency typically in terms of how many leads you generate based on a specific campaign or ad.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition costs are the cost of getting a customer to choose your product or service. This usually includes costs related to marketing and sales activities in a given time period. All the costs that you have spend must be divided by how many customers acquired to get your CAC.
Customer lifetime value (CLV)
A customer's lifetime value is the predicted value of what the customer will bring to the company over the course of the relationship. In order to calculate a customer groups' CLV you have to know what it costs to acquire a new customer, how much profit you make on a customer per year, and how many customers that are leaving you yearly.
Customer relation management (CRM)
Customer relation management is all about how you increase the customer loyalty. If a business optimizes customers' loyalty the costs will decrease and the rentability will increase. Businesses typically use a CRM system in order to gather all customer data in one place which will make it easier to keep track on customers.
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Dialogue
A dialogue can be many things. In our chat world a dialogue is the conversation between one of our chat consultants and a website visitor. Through personal dialogues Weply helps businesses handle their chat inquiries.
Direct traffic
Traffic entering a website without a referral URL from an external source (e.g Twitter or Facebook) is called direct traffic.
Dwell time
A website's dwell time is an expression of how long visitors stay on the site. Having a low dwell time is typically a sign that you also have a high bounce rate which means that visitors exit the site quickly. The other way around, a high dwell time typically goes hand in hand with a lower bounce rate. The latter is a sign to search engines that your website is relevant which will improve your ranking.
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Engagement rate
The rate of engagement is an expression of how many interactions people have with your content. Engagement rate is typically measured from the number of views, impressions, likes, comments, shares, saves or mentions.
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FAQ chat
A chat that only answers Frequently Asked Questions is typically a chat where visitors can get answers on the most common things customers are considering when buying. This could e.g be questions like "How do I return?" or "How long is delivery time?" but of course depend on the business. In some chat solutions it starts by asking FAQ questions and if the customer cannot get the right answer he/she will get the opportunity of being forwarded to a real person.
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Heat map
A heat map is a visually way of getting to know where your customers are looking, scrolling, and clicking on your site. Based on a heat map you can decide where to place CTA's based on the color of the heat in specific areas which usually ranges from red to green.
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Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing covers for the activities that focuses on attracting new organic traffic through existing channels. This kind of marketing heavily relies on creating creative and relevant content that will have an effect on you ranking in search engines.
Interactions
Interactions covers for all the ways customers can engage with you. On social media it is typically through likes, comments, sharing or writing a review. At Weply we naturally focus on the engagement that happens related to the chat. Here we mostly look at if visitors first of all open the chat and afterwards if they start chatting.
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JavaScript
A javascript is a dynamic coding language executed in a browser. In our case, our customers receive a custom javascript that allows us to get their personal chat online.
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Lead generation
A lead is when you get information about a specific person who has shown interest in your business. In our case, a lead is when our chat consultants collect a potentiel customer's name, e-mail address and phone number after a chat.
Lead magnet
A lead magnet is a term that covers for the way you generate leads. When you offer something valuable in return of customers contact information, this is a lead magnet. An example that we see a lot is when you can get access to specific content, guides or insights if you in return give your e-mail address.
Live chat
A live chat is a chat where two human beings communicate in real time online. Having a live chat on your website makes it possible for website visitors to ask their questions.
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Marketing funnel
The marketing funnel is a model used to understand customers' engagement with a business during the entire sales process. The funnel can be used to evaluate individual activities and based on that optimize the entire flow. Traditionally, the funnel is divided into Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Intent, Evaluation and Purchase.
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Nurturing
In relation to the marketing funnel you naturally talk about nurturing. Nurturing is when you try to keep the customer's attention and interest in your brand. In order to do so, it is important to work with each step of the funnel. A live chat is e.g a tool for nurturing website visitors but it can also be CTA elements.
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Opt-in form
An opt-in form is a site where businesses in return of valuable content collect customer information. This is done by offering for example industry reports, statistics or white papers. The customers will have acces to it once they give up their information.
Organic lead
An organic lead is when a lead is generated that the business did not pay for. For example when you hear recommendations for certain products or services through friends and you decide to try it, this is an organic lead.
Organic traffic
All traffic that comes to your website that you have not payed for for example though marketing activities is organic traffic.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing is the marketing activities that focus on pushing the brand to the end customer on external platforms through payed ads.
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Page speed
A website's page speed is simply how fast a site is being downloaded. The bigger elements a site has (javascripts, widgets, etc.) the slower the page speed will be.
Pain points
In a customer journey there can be certain customer paint points. A pain point happens when the customers expectation did not match the experience. It is obviously important to know these pain points so you can optimize the customer journey. A live chat can be useful as paint points usually show in a chat conversation.
Pick up line
In chat context you often invite the visitor to chat with a pick up line. This line should indicate that you are online and ready to help. In our case we ask "Hi, can I help you with anything".
Plugin
A plugin is a piece of software that is being added to a program which will increase the program's qualities.
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Referral marketing
Referral marketing is word-of-mouth recommendations. The recommendations you give to your friends and family based on your own experience with the product or service.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a strategy where businesses want to advertise to persons that already showed interest in the brand. These ads trigs when somebody for example has left a site without buying anything. You can use tools such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Facebook retargeting.
Return On Investment (ROI)
The ROI is a measurement for how much you will get in return for an investment. A positive ROI is a sign that you have earned money and oppesite, a negative ROI is a sign that you will loose money and the investment is not profitabel for you.
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Search engine marketing (SEM)
A SEM strategy is a way of doing marketing. Search engine marketing means that you pay for ads that will appear in the search engine result pages (SERP). Basically companies will bid on keywords that you usually would type in when searching for that specific product or service.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is a marketing strategy where the main goal is to gain a higher ranking in the search results. Working with SEO is quite broad and include things such as building a user-friendly website and creating relevant content.
Segmentation
Segmentation is when you divide customers into groups based on different criteria. These groups are often divided based on industry, age, geographic, demographic etc.
Striking point
In our world a striking point is the moment in a chat dialogue where the potential customer is most likely to give their information. Based on our own chat data we know when the chance of generating a lead is biggest. Generally, this happens after 4-6 interactions but of course it will depend on the context, industry and buying situation.
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Thought leadership
Thought leadership is a way of branding your business, not through your product or service, but by communicating that you are the expert within your field. You usually share your knowledge and expertise through social media, blogs, articles or white papers.
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Unique selling proposition (USP)
A unique selling proposition is a business' competitive advantage and how you differentiate from competitors.
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Web hosting
Web hosting is an online service that basically rent out storage place on a server. A web host storage all stort of files and data for a website which allows the site to function as it should.
Widget
A widget is a block with content you put on your website which adds a new function to your site.