Creating a webchat button for your website is relatively simple, but there are a few things you should know. For instance, you will need the following:
- An active Alterdesk account (if you are using a platform provided by one of our white label partners, you will need to use a different URL in step 1 below. Request this URL from your contact at Alterdesk);
- You need to have at least one shared account linked to your account;
- The account from which the button will be created must have (admin) rights to access the company settings.
When you have got this sorted, you can start making your button! Follow these steps:
- Go to https://webchat.alterdesk.com and click on the green button.
- On the next page, log in with your Alterdesk account.
- Click on the little plus icon on the right of your screen. You will now see a page with several tabs and fields. We will go through the tabs one by one, starting with ‘General’.
- Enter a ‘Name’ which will help you differentiate the button from others. This is purely for your own benefit – your website visitors will not see this name.
- At ‘Title’, enter a title that will be visible for your website visitors. It will be shown in the top bar of the live chat screen.
- At ‘Domain’, enter the URL of the website on which you wish to embed the button (including HTTP(S)). Note: for subdomains (for example, faq.alterdesk.com is a subdomain of alterdesk.com), you will need to create separate live chat buttons.
- Under ‘Shared User’ you can select the shared account you wish to link to the button. This account will be used to communicate with your website visitors. If there are multiple shared accounts linked to your account, you will see a dropdown menu from which you can select the shared account of your choice.
- Next you will get the option to request your visitor’s email address. If you do so, the visitor will be given the choice to create an account on the platform. This way, he/she will be able to consult chats at a later stage and / or reactivate them.
- You can also choose whether you wish to ask only for first names rather than first and last names.
- You can also select certain users to be automatically added to any new live chat group conversation as soon as it is created.
- Under ‘Close live chat after inactivity’ you can set the amount of minutes after which an inactive chat will be closed automatically.
- You can also choose to close the group chat after it has been inactive for a specific amount of time.
- If you automatically give all messages sent and received a lifespan, they will be deleted after the period of time you set for this.
- You can also have the live chat pop up on your website after a set amount of time.
- Besides having the live chat pop up completely after X seconds, you can also choose to use a ‘subtler’ pop-up. If you activate this one, a small message will pop-up from the round live chat button, pulling the attention of the website visitor. Mind: you can only use one of the pop-up options at a time – either the full live chat pop-up or a pop-up message.
- Under ‘Upload limit’ you can set the maximum amount of MBs a website visitor can send using the live chat.
- Recaptcha will be switched on automatically, to prevent spam entries. You can ignore the fields for the key and the secret.
- Go to the second tab: “Questions” (You will not need to click save yet – you can do this after going through all tabs).
- Here you can change the text of the automatic questions according to the tone of voice of your company. If you do not change anything, the system will keep using the default texts.
- Go to the third tab: ‘Planning’.
- Here you can set when your webcare team will be available on the live chat. On those times you are not available, the live chat button will not be shown on your website.
- Under ‘Overwrite status’, you can check whether you are online – even if your planning states you are offline, you will be shown as online on the live chat until you check this off again. (Should you wish to show your button as online all the time, switch on ‘Schedule’ and switch on the status override, set to ‘online’.)
- Under ‘Planning items’ you can set the days and times you wish to show the live chat. Also check whether your timezone is correct in the dropdown on the right of your page.
- If you are always offline on certain dates (holidays, for example), you can set these below ‘Excluded dates’.
- Go to the fourth tab: ‘Theme’.
- Here you can set the colours of the live chat – both of the small round icon your website visitors will initially see and of the chat widget. Tip: for the round icon, choose a colour that stands out from the rest of your website.
- Click ‘Save’. Your button has been prepared now.
- If you wish to edit, switch off or delete your button, you can now do so in your button overview.
- If you click ‘edit’ on the overview screen, you will see two new options at the top of the ‘General’ tab: the option to set an avatar and the option to set a group chat for offline messages. The avatar will be shown as an icon next to the messages sent by the live chat. The group chat for offline messages can be selected from the group chats you have currently available – any messages people leave when your live chat is offline will be posted in this group chat.
- Ready to place the button on your website? Go to the fifth tab: ‘Embed’.
- Copy the script in the language of your website and paste it in the code of your website. Tip: for CMSes like WordPress, you can also paste it in a sidebar widget.
- Refresh the website: your button should be live now!