Bamboo Bot

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How to add a chat bot to your website

About 8 minutes. Works on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and plain HTML.

A chat bubble in the corner of your site does two jobs: it answers the questions visitors would otherwise email you about (or leave over), and it catches the ones a person needs to answer. Getting it live takes one line of code. Getting visitors to use it takes a little thought about what it says first - so this guide covers both.

1. Decide what the bot should handle

Open your inbox and look at the last 30 messages customers sent you. Most businesses find the same five to ten questions over and over: delivery times, returns, opening hours, prices, "do you do X". Those become your FAQ answers. Anything that needs a person - a custom quote, a complaint, a booking - becomes a question flow or goes to your inbox.

Tip: write answers the way you'd say them at the counter, short and specific. "We ship within 2 working days; tracking arrives by email" beats a paragraph about your logistics partner.

2. Write the first message and the quick replies

The greeting is the first thing a visitor sees, so make it useful: say what the bot can help with. Then add three or four quick-reply buttons for your most common questions - visitors tap far more often than they type.

Greeting:       Hi! 👋 I can help with shipping, returns or a custom order.
Quick replies:  Shipping · Returns · Custom order quote · Talk to a person

Each button simply sends its text, so pair it with an FAQ keyword (for example "shipping") or a lead-capture flow that starts on "quote".

3. Decide when to ask for contact details

Asking for an email before the chat starts gets you a way to reply later, but some visitors leave instead. A good default is ask, but allow skipping, and let your lead-capture flow ask for contact details only when someone actually wants a quote or booking. Make it required only if you can't help anyone without replying by email.

4. Set the "no answer" message

When the bot doesn't recognise a question, it should say so honestly and promise a human reply: "Thanks! We've got your message and will reply here soon." In Bamboo Bot this is sent once per conversation, until you answer yourself from the inbox.

5. Paste the code into your site

Your bot's Chat widget page shows one line like this:

<script src="https://bamboobot.shop/widget.js" data-bot="123" data-key="your-key" async></script>

Put it just before the closing </body> tag of every page, or in your site builder's "custom code" area:

The bubble draws itself in an isolated layer, so your site's styles can't break it and it can't change your site.

6. Lock it to your domain

The embed code is visible in your page source, so add your domain under Only on these websites. Other sites pasting your code then get nothing. Subdomains such as shop.example.com are included automatically.

7. Get told when someone writes

If you already use Telegram or Discord, connect a bot there too and choose it under Alerts. Every new website message then pings your phone, with a link straight to the conversation.

8. Test, then switch on

Use the Test lab to try every question and quick reply without sending anything, then press Preview on this page to see the real bubble. Switch the bot on and visit your own site in a private window to check it once more.

Common problems