Is it worth adding a chat box to your forum?

[David Beroff]

I see on a lot of forums that are basically set up a chatbox for their members on their forums. I am also having a small forums with a few members online daily. I am thinking of this idea but not sure it will work for my forum or not. In your opinion, Is it worth adding a chat box to your forum?

 

[komputerking]

I would say no as the chatbox would lessen the amount of content written on the site which can be indexed and lessen the overall visits to the forum. If it was a small forum for you and your friends, I would say chatbox it on up. But if you are trying to grow the forum, then you want visits and hits on it, and people to get alerted to posts and visit it anew.

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

Thanks for sharing your advice, I though to this point first because content created by members via posts will be more better than content on chatbox.

 

[huggypillows]

For me is NO to chatbox its much better if they post they're opinion on Forum so everyone can give and share their own opinions. a chatbox turn up to a personal chat sometimes and some member cannot relate to the topic when they need to scroll up the whole chat to see what they are talking about.

 

[RoseKaizer]

For me its a yes, so if ever there is a conversation of every member that are need to discuss privately, you can pm it, and not thru the forum.

 

[Alexandrea23]

I think chat box just takes space in your page. We can just say our suggestions and comments in the forum thread. If there was a personal matter ,we can send a private message. I hope this helps tnx.

 

[gtorres08]

I personally think that a chat box is unnecessary. There are a lot of ways to give your audience freedom on what they think about your site, but having a chat box right away is a little spacious. Aside from that, chatbox may turn into something you might not like or expect. People might use it as a personal conversing medium or worse, may use it to spread links to various explicit websites.

 

[jennyfermanuel]

In my opinion, adding a chatbox in your forum might lead to the decrease of comments and ideas given on the forum itself. I believe there are good and bad effects in using a chatbox. Yes there are matters need to be discussed privately, but maybe we can just use other applications to send our private concern to whoever we need to talk to. Otherwise it can be use only for personal conversations that aren't really helpful in the forum.

 

[widgetnikkie]

Yes it worth so that you can know what is there suggestion about youur forum. if there is no chat box in your forum your forum is like no life also and the people will enter your forum they will just look on you if there is a mistake you will not correct it how come that you have forum without chat box there is no life boring forum so its worth it ask me again and i will give you suggestion.

 

[WSCallum]

Depends on the situation, a chatbox can take away from content that's available for everyone to see, as it's only in live time, but it might be useful to use for special events etc.

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

Thanks for your advice, that is thing that I though.
What about adding a chat box for members or visitors can chat with administrators only? is that a good idea?

 

[Nixtree]

ChatBox will be a liablity in future for you. It is always good to have chat for a support company / hosting company as they need immediate support. If you simply running a forum then there is no need for that as normally issues which comes to forums will not be of the nature of immediate requirement.

 

[AdminKings]

I agree that it can take the focus off people engaging in the forum, especially general chat categories.

I do find that chat rooms can work on some boards which have live events such as sports.

 

[Malcolmjr96]

Like many others have said above, having a chat box is not recommended on a forum. Simply due to drawing attention from your forum sections.

 

[Adam Stokes]

They are not essential but highly recommended.

And what do I mean by that?

1. First chatbots are designed to answer any queries and even doubts prospects may have about the products and services the site is offering.

Though traditional support desks can still do the same, they may take some time and not being able to handle too many queries at a time.

2. It may be true. It may also be false. But whichever, marketers are doing this to show just how popular their products and services are.