The topic clearly struck a chord for business owners evidenced by several days of the story being tweeted and retweeted. While we’d like to believe that it was a fascination with live chat technology that drove the excitement, we understand that the story’s real appeal was its unspoken message.  The idea that website owners aren’t simply beholden to the whims of their visitors but, instead, can effectively exert influence over the buying cycle is a powerful message.  Another recently published article discusses this as well.

“Mastering Customer Capture on Your Website” appeared in Website Magazine not to long ago and was authored, in part, by Bold Software’s CEO.  The article, like the WSJ one, is focused on ‘after-click’ marketing.  It’s primary concern is helping businesses to think about capturing contact information from visitors in a way that drives bottom line improvement.   Even if a visitor can’t be immediately converted to a sale, capturing their information is a step toward making them tomorrow’s customer.

The article discusses using visitor monitoring, live chat, and other tools to assist in information capture.