C4A website through the years: 20th anniversary

Click4Assistance isn’t a company that likes to stand still. And you can see this in the way our website has evolved. Back in 2006, it was a tiny little pixelated thing. Now, on our twentieth anniversary, it’s bold, modern and easy to use.

Part of this has to do with our evolving offering. Before, Click4Assistance offered simple chat features (for as little as 99p per day!) But now we have an integrated suite of communication solutions suitable for companies of all sizes, up to the enterprise level. Yes, chat is still a part of what we do, but now our apps and software are much more capable.

Click4Assistance Website In 2006

Believe it or not, this is what Click4Assistance’s website looked like in 2006. Of course, back then the average screen size was only 480 x 320 pixels, so there was a hard limit on how much information you could fit on the screen.

We only had one product in 2006 – our live assistance service. We designed it so website owners could use it to curate leads and build more sales. However, even then it was more than just a chat facility. Business owners could also leverage it to see who entered and left their websites and up-sell their products. We saw how text-based interfaces had the potential to reduce support costs and build stronger relationships with leads.

Despite the website’s age (nearly twenty years old), you can still see our colours, theme, and value proposition. We were proud to be a UK-based company and still are today.

Click4Assistance Website In 2010

In 2010 we decided to up the ante, creating a brand-new website with more features. Prospective clients could chat with us live (using our in-house tools) and schedule demonstrations to learn how to set up live chat on website pages. However, our core product remained largely the same. Software-enabled customers could create more leads and enquiries using our tools.

Because of the growth of the ecommerce business during this era, we also started advertising live chat’s ability to reduce cart abandonment (a common problem in the industry). We promoted the idea that agents could resolve queries before prospects left retail websites, leading to more sales.

You can see more of the Click4Assistance branding in the 2010 website version, and our iconic speech bubble logo appeared for the first time. However, the home page was still text-heavy with a cluttered sidebar distracting attention from our main message.

Click4Assistance Website In 2014

In 2014, the Click4Assistance website underwent another gigantic upgrade. We changed almost everything, from the menu to the contact details. The goal was to make our value proposition straightforward while introducing prospects to new features. Placing the menu at the top helped with this.

The nature of SEO also changed during this era. Google wanted to see more information on home pages to help its algorithms work out what websites offered. Therefore, we included keyword-optimised text below our menus and carousels to attract more online traffic. We also used the space to explain more about what we did and how adding chatbots to websites could improve business performance.

By this stage, we’d built a considerable client base and were keen to list the organisations working with us, including Mazda, Harveys, the Energy Saving Trust, and the University of Liverpool. This support gave us credibility and also allowed us to continue investing in our services to improve them further.

Click4Assistance Website In 2018

Taking new lessons onboard, we updated the Click4Assistance website again in 2018, giving it a new look and feel. We refined the menu and the on-page text layout and removed ugly clutter that detracted from the experience. We also added a stylish new logo and an attractive, business-themed carousel, explaining the benefits of our products.

Between 2014 and 2018, our range of products expanded considerably. Beyond live chat, we also began offering other tools, including smartContact (for collecting visitor details), Click2Call (enabling instant phone connections), the ability to display special offers, and meeting rooms (where multiple parties could text simultaneously). These developments expanded the capability of our text chat systems significantly, forcing us to rethink how we structured our site. It became clear we’d need more service pages to explain all the new features.

The best part of the new website format was the helpful “Free Trial” and “Request A Demo” call-to-action buttons fixed to the header. These allowed visitors to take the next step with us, regardless of their position on the page. Users could start immediately, pushing them down the sales funnels and toward implementing chat apps in their business.

2024’s Click4Assistance website is a refinement of the 2018 version. We added more visual features and refined the style of the menu and call-to-action buttons. Now users can see our TrustPilot reviews on-page and learn more about our industry-leading partnerships with Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Capita.

What the future holds for Click4Assistance

While our website has changed enormously over the last twenty years, we’re not ready to stop improving and put our feet up. There’s just so much more to do. We believe the future of Click4Assistance and the entire industry looks promising because of recent technology developments.

For example, at the end of 2022, ChatGPT transformed our expectations of what chatbots could do. We knew about transformers and natural language processing (NLP) at that point (and had implemented the latter in our chatbots), but, like everyone else, we weren’t aware of the incredible power of large language models (LLMs) to hold conversations. These advanced pieces of software seemed to know how to respond to any prompts and even reason using provided data.

This breakthrough was just what the live chat app industry needed. Until then, machine learning could gauge the rough meaning of NLP inputs, but it couldn’t respond in kind and relied on businesses programming stock responses. As such, users got canned, non-personalised answers.

For basic business services, this approach was okay. Companies could create conversation trees that provided customers with answers to their queries and forwarded them to the relevant resource (i.e. a blog, customer service rep, sales page, etc.)

However, firms running more advanced processes couldn’t rely on chatbots as much as they would like. Clients would inevitably call to speak to a human assistant who could help them.

That’s where ChatGPT-enabled technology changes everything. LLMs can provide cohesive, common-sense answers to most questions, and even retrieve information from elsewhere on branded websites and the internet to provide more in-depth explanations.

LLM technology (as we understand it in 2024) is rare in live website chatbots, but it is coming. These AIs will link to on-site chat apps and leverage the machine learning power of the cloud to provide sensible answers to almost any visitor question.

As before, some programming would be necessary. However, this would involve providing LLMs with company-specific information relevant to users instead of typing out specific answers. Chatbots could then combine this data with their existing knowledge (from the rest of the web) to provide sensible solutions.

At Click4Assistance, we believe the LLM approach to chatbots will let AI agents personalise conversations more. These touches will help brands connect with their audiences through websites, developing rapport without requiring costly human interactions.

LLMs will also respond to customers in-kind, including in their native language. This feature could improve sales funnels further, encouraging prospects to take the next step.

Of course, if customers want to talk to a human rep, they will still be able to. But LLMs are changing the game in ways hardly anyone expected even three years ago. The idea that even complex decision-making could be automated is within reach.

Aside from personalisation, the promise of self-service using AI assistance is also tantalising. The idea is simple: get website visitors to use artificial intelligence to search for products, services, and content, explaining options along the way.

These features essentially play the role of a personal sales assistant. Customers provide chatbots with personal information about their needs and characteristics and get the AI to show them suitable options given their circumstances and criteria.

For example, suppose an older person with mobility issues is looking for a new car. After twenty years of absence in the market, they don’t know what’s suitable. However, if an AI understood their situation, it could guide them to possible solutions, depending on what’s in the company inventory.

At Click4Assistance, we also think a focus on security and compliance will become more critical in the future. Beefing up chatbots to ensure they have protocols to protect customer information will encourage more interactions.

Advanced encryption and GDPR compliance are already selling points of the top solutions. However, this process could go even further, with additional layers of security (with customisation for how chat apps use personal data).

Wrapping Up

As you can see, the Click4Assistance website evolved considerably over the last twenty years. Our knowledge increased and standards improved. However, we also had to accommodate increasing product capabilities. By 2018, it was no longer accurate to say we offered a single service (as it was in 2006).

Of course, we will continue to develop our solutions into the future, including incorporating AI. We will also seek to improve our website further, making it even more intuitive, attractive, and easy to use.