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Overview

Website chat (also called the chat widget) puts a floating chat button on your own site. Visitors open it, send a message, and the conversation lands in your Inbox on the Website chat channel. There, an AI Employee or your team replies in real time. Find it under Settings → Website Chat (/settings/chat-widget).
In short: 1) Name and style your chat button. 2) Pick an AI Employee to answer visitors. 3) Paste the install code on your site and turn it on.
Time to complete: ~20 minutes  ·  Difficulty: Beginner  ·  Setup is a four-step wizard — Appearance, AI Assistant, Customer Experience, Install — with a live Try it preview beside it. Save changes works from any step.

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Before you start

  • Permission to edit website chat settings. With view-only access you can look but not change anything.
  • To have AI answer visitors, create an active AI Employee first.
  • To offer in-chat booking, create a meeting type (a bookable appointment, such as a 30-minute consultation) first.
  • A way to paste a short piece of code into your website (or its WordPress, Shopify, Wix, or Squarespace custom-code area). If a web designer manages your site, they can do this for you.

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Set up your widget

Appearance

Enter a Chat name (up to 100 characters; defaults to “Customer Support”) and a Welcome message (up to 500 characters) — or click Use suggestion. Pick a Theme color from the presets. Or choose Custom and enter a 6-digit hex value such as #6366f1 (a color code; your brand guide or web designer will have it). Set Chat position to Bottom right or Bottom left.Under Brand images, add a Logo for the chat header (Use my company logo copies your organization logo). Add a Profile photo, shown beside each assistant reply. Add a Chat button icon to replace the default speech-bubble on the floating button — leave it empty to keep the default.

AI Assistant

Pick the AI Employee that greets and answers visitors, or choose No assistant for now to handle chats yourself. If you don’t have one yet, Create an AI Assistant takes you to the AI Employee setup and brings you back with your draft intact.

Customer Experience

  • Show quick questions — up to 6 one-tap prompts (label up to 60 characters, message up to 500). Add presets such as Pricing or Book a demo, or Add custom. Drag to reorder.
  • Allow appointment booking — pick a Booking type so visitors can book without leaving the chat.
  • Business hours — Always open (24/7) or Set specific hours with a Timezone and a weekly schedule.
  • Offline & after-hours — see Offline behavior.
  • Smart greetings — up to 20 rules that change the welcome message. Match on visitor type (Returning / First-time), campaign source (which ad or link brought them), the page they landed on, or whether you’re open or closed. The first matching rule wins; otherwise the default welcome message shows.

Install

Click Save changes first — your install code is generated on the first save. Pick your platform (WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, React, or HTML) for tailored instructions and click Copy code. Paste it just before the closing </body> tag on every page where you want chat. Your web designer will know where this is.

Turn it on

Use the Turn chat on switch in the page header. The badge reads Live or Hidden. Turning it off hides chat from your site without losing settings.

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Understand the install code

The install code (also called the embed snippet) is the same for every platform. It’s one line of code that carries your widget key — an ID that tells us which widget to show.
Always copy the exact tag from the Install step: it contains your real key and the correct address for your account. The widget key only identifies your widget — it isn’t a secret. Your web designer may need to control when the widget starts (for example, after a cookie-consent banner). If so, they can leave out data-widget-key and start it from their own code:
For developers, window.AutoCampaign also offers open() and close().

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Choose images for the logo, profile photo, and chat button icon

Each image field offers Upload or Image URL:
  • Upload accepts PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WebP up to 5 MB (requires permission to add media).
  • Image URL must be a full web address starting with http:// or https://, up to 500 characters, pointing to an image that is already online.
  • Pasted images, data: addresses, and icon names (such as chat-bubble) are rejected with “Use a web address starting with https:// — upload the file instead”.

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Limit which websites can show your widget

In the Install step, Allowed domains restricts which sites can load your widget. Click Add domain and enter the site’s domain name only, such as shop.example (no https:// and no page path) — up to 20 entries.
  • With no domains listed, any website can embed this widget (the page warns you).
  • Matching is exact. *.example.com covers every subdomain (such as shop.example.com) but not example.com itself — add both if you need both.
  • Enter international domains exactly as your browser’s address bar shows them.

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Where conversations land

Every chat appears in the Inbox as a Website chat conversation. Reply from the composer like any other channel, and the visitor sees your reply live. If you assigned an AI Employee, it answers first and hands the conversation to your team when one of its Human help triggers is met. Visitors start anonymous: there’s no form to fill in before chatting. A visitor becomes a contact (source: web chat) when the AI Employee collects their details or when they submit the leave-a-message form. If a contact with the same phone (or, failing that, the same email) already exists, the details are added to that contact and only fill in blank fields. A returning visitor on the same browser resumes their conversation for up to 30 days.

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Offline behavior

Offline settings appear only when business hours are Set specific hours. Outside those hours the widget shows your Offline message (up to 500 characters) and when you’re back, in the visitor’s local time.
  • Let AI reply outside business hours on (default) — visitors keep chatting with your AI Employee.
  • Off — visitors see a leave-a-message form (name, email, optional phone, message, and an I agree to be contacted checkbox). The message lands in the Inbox and the visitor is saved as a contact.
Limits: one widget per organization. Visitor messages are text only, up to 4,000 characters, with no file attachments. Visitors can send up to 20 messages per minute. Schedules can’t span midnight (the latest end time is 23:59).

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FAQ

Yes. The Try it pane gives real AI replies once an AI Employee is assigned. Nothing there is saved or sent to your team.
No. The install code stays the same; saved changes apply the next time the widget loads.
Messages still arrive in the Inbox. Your team replies manually.

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Troubleshooting

Check that Turn chat on shows Live, the install code is on the page, and the site’s domain is in Allowed domains (or the list is empty). Remember that *.example.com doesn’t cover example.com.
Click Save changes once — the code is generated on the first save.
Use an https:// address of 500 characters or fewer, or switch to Upload.
Select a Booking type. If none are listed, create a meeting type first.

Set up an AI Employee

Give your website chat an assistant that answers around the clock.