I am thinking of providing a live chat service on my website as I think it could be a valuable to service to my users.

The only problem is I am "a one man band" currently and am worried that because of this the live chat service will not be available when I'm not on the computer.

Do you think I should still go through with this as a valuable resource when i'm online or would it annoy users too much if the offline time is too great?

If you can't provide live support all day i would advise against doing it.
It would be better to have your customers shoot off an email and you answer it in 24 hours than for them to join "live support" and find you are never there. It will look like poor support, Which is the opposite effect you are trying to achieve.

you can chat Live with your customer to provide assistance & information about your product & convince for your product. Live chat service is very helpful for online business. & giving posotive results.

You can try www.live2support.com , very good hosted live chat software for websites to promote sales. Very cheap(starts at 8.99 USD) in comparision to other services. support also matters. you can easily customize visitor window look according to your website.

Yes I thought it might annoy people if the live chat service was not available an excessive amount. Due to the fact I also work with my 9am - 5pm job until my website starts making a good profit I would only be available from 6pm - 12pm and that wouldn't be every single night due to other commitments and the fact that contrary to popular belief us IT people do have social lives

If I was available from 6pm - 12pm (UK time) it would be 11am - 5pm or 1pm - 7pm in the USA depending on which time zone. Because most of my users are American that would still be a prime time service for them.

Web chat options are a good way to go. They are known for increasing profit. Depending what you are selling, it might make sense to hire someone fulltime to do it for you.

If you can get on live support during your normal business hours I wouldn’t worry too much about having 24 hour live support. You could use Shine Live Help. It is an open source live chat so it is free to try out and see if your customers use it. It also has an option so if you are offline, or even busy with another customer, they can leave you a message.
http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/shinelivehelp/

Well you can try a on-trigger popup window with a few free Flash chat.

I use chatango for one of my ecommerce site. You can see it in action here http://fleur.hk/ .

Though I recommend you try writing simple and clear instructions on how to contact you, such as skype, phone, address, etc. People these days want an online merchant to be reputable.

you can specify online and offline hours, so they will know when to come and ask for support. . . and i think that ur right, being offline too much WILL annoy them

I think Roy is right. Your best bet if you really want to provide this service would be to set a schedule, post it, and then follow it. As you say, you are a one man band. Sometimes providing consistent quality service in that case is difficult but if you follow your posted schedule you should be good for keeping your customers happy. Of course, you may have to account for wait time, depending on how busy the service gets. I worked as a live help operator for a number of months for someone who had a pretty large staff of live help operators on 24/7. It was quite a challenge but it was a popular service so it was worth it to the customers.

Going with a schedule is best - live chat would just assure your customers who chat with you that chat, at least at some intervals is available and it gives you more credibility as opposed to companies who do not have chat at all.

There are also a lot of companies who you can outsource the chats for a low cost. try a google search.

ok i looking for one of this as well. hope this one works. will check their contract if any. pricing 8+ is ok. thanks

If it's not too expensive try it out, depending on the application you use, I think you can add a notice when they enter chat that your only available from 6am-6pm or something like that.

It is a good idea to have a live chat support. Just point out the hours when you are available.

Outsource the web help to India

Do it. When you are offline, it's going to be the exact same thing as if you hadn't even used the live chat software. When you ARE online, you a providing wonderful support. What is there to lose? That some snobs will watch your website for 24 hours and notice that you're not online 24/7?

Screw those guys.

Hey Andrew, If you can't be there all the time for live chat than post at which times you will be available and allow your visitors to leave you a voice message. You may also wish to post schedule phone conference times that you will also be available. Good Pluck

I have experienced waiting about 30mins to somebody respond on a live chat and it annoyed me. It happened during when I need to ask a tech support of our hosting about our site's problems.

It's better not to set-up it since you can't be always on your pc. Or you can look for someone to take your place when you're away.

Providing the online and offline schedule is definitely a good idea. But give them another option (email or contact form) to contact you so that customers can still leave their inquiries. If money is not an issue, hire someone that will do and monitor for you.