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Owners and admins only. Others can look, but not save.
Go to Website chat and open a widget. Its settings are on five tabs: Appearance, Content, Behaviour, Install and Analytics. The preview on the right follows what you change. Each tab has its own Save button. Nothing reaches your site until you choose it, and saved changes go live within a few minutes.

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Appearance

Pictures you upload are saved straight away, without choosing Save.

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Remove the Powered by Companion mark

On Growth or Business, switch Powered by Companion off on the Appearance tab. On other plans the switch cannot be changed. If you later move to a plan without it, the mark comes back by itself.

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Content

Keep messages to a line or two. They are read on a phone.

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Questions before the first message

Switch Ask before the first message on and choose what to ask under The form. Every question is off until you switch it on, and each can be marked Required.
  • Name
  • WhatsApp number
  • Email
  • What it is about
  • Up to three questions of your own, with Add your own question
Each question is one more reason for a visitor to close the chat, so ask only for what you need.

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Behaviour

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Where a conversation goes

Both choices keep the chat in your inbox. This decides how strongly the widget offers WhatsApp.
  • Move it to WhatsApp: offers WhatsApp throughout the chat.
  • Keep it on the site: WhatsApp stays a small link in the footer.

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Opening hours

Choose Always open or Set hours. A new widget is always open, so the out of hours message is never shown until you set hours. With Set hours, pick a time zone and the hours for each day. The hours are in that time zone wherever the visitor is, and can run past midnight. Outside them, the widget does what Out of hours says.

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Which pages show it

  • Every page: the chat shows on every page of the sites it is allowed on.
  • Only these pages: it shows on the paths you list.
  • Not on these pages: it shows everywhere except the paths you list, which is useful for a checkout.
A path is the part of the address after your domain, such as /contact. End it with a star to cover everything beneath it: /products/* covers every product page. You can list up to 50 paths.

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Install and Analytics

The Install tab holds the sites the widget may appear on, the snippet and the check that it is live. See Install the widget. The Analytics tab shows, for the last 7, 30 or 90 days, how many visitors saw the button, opened the chat, started a conversation and moved to WhatsApp. It also shows your average first reply time, the pages and devices that start conversations, and Export conversations as CSV.

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A Shopify store’s chat button

A widget created by the Shopify app opens WhatsApp with the shopper’s message and has no on-site chat window. Settings that only a chat window uses are left out for it: the out of hours message and behaviour, the questions before the first message, the message to start with, where a conversation goes, and opening hours.