Website chat is a chat button on your own website. A visitor clicks it, types a message, and it arrives in Conversations beside your WhatsApp chats. Your team answers it from the same place.
Owners and admins add and change website chat. Everyone else can open Website chat and look.
How a visitor’s message reaches you
- The visitor clicks the button on your site and a small chat window opens.
- They type a message. They can attach an image too.
- The message arrives in Conversations, marked Website chat.
- You reply from the conversation as usual. The visitor sees your reply in the chat window on your site.
Companion also shows you what the visitor answered before chatting, the page they were on and where they came from.
A website chat is not WhatsApp, so in these conversations you can send text and photos. Templates, products and payment links are for WhatsApp conversations.
A website chat ends after 30 days with nothing from either side. After that the visitor no longer sees new replies there, and the conversation says so.
Carrying on in WhatsApp
If the widget has a WhatsApp number set, the chat window offers Continue on WhatsApp. On a phone it opens WhatsApp. On a computer it shows a QR code to scan.
WhatsApp opens on a chat with your number, with the starting message you chose if you set one. The visitor sends the first message themselves, which opens the 24-hour window in the usual way. That WhatsApp chat appears in Conversations as a WhatsApp conversation of its own, separate from the website chat.
You choose how strongly the widget offers WhatsApp. See Customise the widget.
It does not use your WhatsApp allowance
Replies in a website chat do not go through WhatsApp, so they do not count towards your free WhatsApp replies and Meta does not charge for them.
Starting the free trial
Your free trial starts when you connect your first channel: a WhatsApp number or a website chat. So creating your first widget starts the 14 days if you have not connected a number yet.
The exception is a workspace that began with the free Shopify app. There, adding a widget does not start the trial. Connecting a WhatsApp number does.
