How to Create a Chatbot for Your Website
In the digital age, chatbots have become essential for enhancing user experience and streamlining customer interactions. This guide provides a step-by-step process to build a chatbot tailored to your website’s needs.
Whether you’re a seasoned developer or a beginner, you’ll find this guide useful in navigating the complexities of chatbot development. Let’s embark on this journey to create a chatbot that will engage your website visitors and transform their experience.
Watch this quick video guide on setting up a ProProfs chatbot on your website.
Why should you use a chatbot?
- Provide Instant, 24x7 Customer Support:
- Free Up Your Operators
- Increase User Interaction
- Enhance Your Customer’s Support Experience
- Attract High-Quality Leads
This article covers the following:
1. Creating a bot from scratch
2. Personalizing bot interactions
Here's how you can create a bot in ProProfs:
1. In your ProProfs Live Chat account, go to Bots in the top navigation banner.
2. Hover your mouse over the Create New Bot button. You can select any of the following:
a. Create From Scratch
b. Create Using Templates
For this guide, we will create a bot from scratch.
3. Here’s what the bot builder interface will look like. You can perform the following actions:
a. Assign a name to your bot.
b. Modify the Welcome Message.
c. Add a new interaction panel to create a conversation flow.
d. Preview your bot.
4. Let us see how you can modify the Welcome Message interaction panel.
- Click on the box to open the interaction panel. Here, you can perform the following actions:
a. Interaction Name: The first interaction panel consists of the opening message for the visitor. It is preferable to give the interaction panels a name to differentiate between various interaction messages or responses. Here, we name it "Welcome Message."
b. Type the Bot response below: You can add the message you want the bot to display to the visitor in this box. Enter a "welcome message" in this case. For example, Hi! I am your virtual assistant. How can I help you today?
You can attach media files and add CTAs to personalize the bot responses.
c. Allow/restrict User response: If you want visitors to respond to your message, use the toggle to activate. Since we welcomed the visitor in the first interaction panel, we would keep it as is.
Once done, click Save.
5. Create the flow of your chatbot based on the current message and anticipated response by the user, if applicable.
- Click the + button as shown below.
- Select the interaction type from the list. You can choose from the options to develop a conversation flow that will require user responses.
- Keep it as a simple interaction where the bot sends a message or a response.
- You can add an open-ended question and seek a visitor's response in any of the given formats.
- You can assign an action to the bot based on the interaction with the visitor.
Let's say you may ask the visitor's name in the next step. Choose Text Response as the response type. Learn more about available bot interactions and how to use them.
6. Design the interaction panel to ask pertinent questions and obtain relevant responses from the visitor.
Continue with steps 5 and 6 to further develop the conversation flow of your bot.
Personalizing Bot Conversations
ProProfs Chatbot allows you to personalize the chat to make it more engaging for the visitor. The ‘‘+Add Attribute” button enables you to send appropriate replies using the visitor’s name, email address, or phone number.
For example,
-
Thank you, {name}.
-
You will receive a confirmation email at {email}.
-
Our support team will call you at {phone}.
Such responses will build a trust factor, and the visitor will feel assured.
Let’s see how to add attributes in the screenshot below.
- Click on Add Attribute when you are adding the bot response, and choose your preferred attribute to personalize the response.
- You can even add a custom attribute based on your preferences.
- Click Save after selecting the suitable attribute.
- Preview the chat using the ‘‘Preview” option and see how the interaction looks.
The following screenshot gives a glimpse of the chat flow.
Personalization improves the user experience by giving the visitor an authentic and inclusive feeling.
How to Manage Your ChatBots
In your ProProfs Chat account,
- Go to Bots in the top navigation menu. Here, you can do the following:
a. Click the ‘'pencil icon” to edit the chatbot.
b. Click the gear icon to access bot settings.
c. Preview your bot.
d. Create a copy of your existing bot.
e. Delete a bot from your account.
f. Activate/deactivate a bot using the toggle.
How to Access ProProfs Chatbot Settings
1. In your ProProfs Chat account,
- Navigate to Bots in the top navigation menu. A list of all your bots will appear.
- Click the gear icon, ⚙️, of a bot to access its settings.
2. In the settings interface, you can customize various options:
a. Name: You can give a name to your chatbot for easy recognition if you have different bots for different purposes on your website. It won’t be visible to the visitor. For example, Pricing Assistance Bot if you want to resolve queries related to the pricing of your products.
b. Display Name: The name will show up on the chat window. It will also be visible to the visitor to know whom they are interacting on your website.
c. Display Image: You can choose an image from our library or upload a new one per your liking and customize your chatbot.
d. Show Bot: Click the ‘‘Show bot when” dropdown to decide when you want the bot to appear. You can choose to show when Chat is Online, Chat is Offline, and Chat is Online/Offline.
You can set conditions related to your website URL for a particular Bot to become active. You can activate a Bot when your website URL:
- Is all pages: It indicates the Bot will be active on all web pages of your website.
- Contains: It indicates the Bot will be active only on those URLs that contain the mentioned keyword.
- Is: Enter a URL where you want the Bot to be active.
Remember to click Save after making changes.
That is all about building ProProfs Chatbot. If you have any queries or need further assistance, please feel free to contact us. We are here to help and provide you with a seamless support experience on your website.