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My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
31–40 of 169 posts
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I love chat support interfaces and use them all the time. If I want support, that is. But not when I hit your site for the first time and just getting acquainted with your product. I just want to see your product materials at my own pace in peace. If you want me to see something different, change those materials to whatever you want your first impression to be. But don't accost me with a "can i help you" before…
> There should NEVER be any unsolicited modals […] GDPR warnings Hah. You expect sites to not track you just because you are there for the first time? If that were the case there’d probably be no GDPR.
No, I just block cookies from ALL sites except the few that I need to log into. GDPR is mostly irrelevant to me for that reason.
The unfortunate result is that the goddamn GDPR warnings keep popping up, because ironically, the way those websites remember that you either "accepted" or "denied" the tracking request is to leave a cookie, and I don't allow or want to allow that cookie.
EDIT: Separately, there are many websites that only have an "accept" button and no "decline" button. By blocking the modal dialog boxes, I never actually "accepted", and therefore they never got my permission to track. Ha!
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#33Why does my mouse cursor disappear when I move it over this website? It makes it virtually impossible to use...
I can't get the page to load reliably enough to test, but I saw the same issue.
Are you running the Dark Reader extension by chance?
I think the author didn't test with Dark Reader, which is fair, but they override the cursor, which is not fair. Please don't do that, it's not as cool as you think it is and it breaks things for your users.
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#34I absolutely despise those pop-up "Can I help you" boxes on product websites (usually Intercom). It completely disrupts my flow as a reader in trying to understand the product. That attention disruption got so bad I blocked Intercom and their ilk via injected CSS rules. I really want to take it a step further and write a plug in to interface a chat bot with the human on the other end and waste their time so sites beg…
Have a look at this project, there's a bunch of us that hate these things!
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought like you in the past. I only installed the Crisp chatbox (with no popup) on my SaaS and was very surprised with the results: I got more contact from users through it than through Email or Telegram. I got a lot of feedback and was able to help many potential customers. As developers who never need help, we tend to forget that some people might do, and that a Chatbox that annoys us can help them.
I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. Doubly so if it doesn't go straight to a human, there are ones that want to shove you through the crappy zendesk "are you sure this helpdesk article doesn't answer your question" flow. Anything that pops up and interrupts me while I'm reading something else is pretty much a deal breaker. Having to stop what I'm doing to hit a little X and get back to it has cost a…
> I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating.
The supermajority here does, or so I would guess.
We aren’t representative, and that’s important to remember when designing user interfaces.
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought like you in the past. I only installed the Crisp chatbox (with no popup) on my SaaS and was very surprised with the results: I got more contact from users through it than through Email or Telegram. I got a lot of feedback and was able to help many potential customers. As developers who never need help, we tend to forget that some people might do, and that a Chatbox that annoys us can help them.
Sure, I love chat support interfaces and use them all the time. If I want support, that is. But not when I hit your site for the first time and just getting acquainted with your product. I just want to see your product materials at my own pace in peace. If you want me to see something different, change those materials to whatever you want your first impression to be. But don't accost me with a "can i help you" before…
As a data analyst I have evaluated the performance of chatbots in particular and modals in general for several clients.
And I can agree with you. There is actually nearly always a customer segment that finds chatbots and popups totally annoying. This usually ends up in this segment leaving the site disproportionately due to the modals, which leads to a loss of revenue.
At the same time there is a segment (usually much larger) that appreciates chatbots and FAQ modals - even on the first visit. Here these functionalities lead to a significant increase in sales.
I think that it is quite difficult to automatically assign the user to the appropriate segment and adjust the behavior of the website accordingly. Unfortunately.
Du such popups annoy me and I belong in the same segment as you? Absolutely. Am I an empiricist and do I have to advise most of my clients on such functionalities after appropriate tests because they boost sales? Also absolutely.
And on the question of GDPR modals, I'm afraid I have to say that they are an absolute legal necessity. Unfortunately, the way they have been implemented in most cases I know of is designed to put the user behind the scenes and make him accept more tracking/cookies than he would like to. These things annoy me so much and should be banned from the net.
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#37your scrollbar is dead
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#38I'd just like to point out how absolutely terrible that simulated mouse cursor on that site is. Feels very sluggish and weird. Please don't do this.
That reminded me of this experiment [1]. Augment your CTR with simulated mouse cursor /s. But yes, the home page is unusable for me too.. [1]: https://javier.xyz/control-user-cursor/
I can barely fathom that allowing this has even crossed browser developer's minds. This feature is just evil from the start and every browser feature, no matter how trivial or benign will eventually be abused.
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get current cursor position, and you can render things at arbitrary positions on the screen. Making this not possible would probably unnecessarily restrict your ability to build even actually useful things. Although hiding the real mouse cursor probably shouldn't be allowed without a permission dialog imo.
Yep the following part is fine with me, it's hiding the mouse cursor that is alienating. I would have thought it to be OK for a website to pick from a few standard system cursors (pointer, hand, I-bar, move, resize, etc.) but not no cursor.
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Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I love chat support interfaces and use them all the time. If I want support, that is. But not when I hit your site for the first time and just getting acquainted with your product. I just want to see your product materials at my own pace in peace. If you want me to see something different, change those materials to whatever you want your first impression to be. But don't accost me with a "can i help you" before…
As a data analyst I have evaluated the performance of chatbots in particular and modals in general for several clients. And I can agree with you. There is actually nearly always a customer segment that finds chatbots and popups totally annoying. This usually ends up in this segment leaving the site disproportionately due to the modals, which leads to a loss of revenue. At the same time there is a segment (usually muc…
> And on the question of GDPR modals, I'm afraid I have to say that they are an absolute legal necessity.
I block cookies from all sites by default, and make exceptions for the few that I need to log into. The result is the GDPR modals keep popping up because the modals can't set cookies to remember whether or not I accepted.
So the only thing I can do is inject JS/CSS to block them.
(Also by de-modalizing it and hiding it, I never actually need to accept anything, and nobody gets my permission to track, hee hee.)