How to Create Chatbot for a Website (Step-by-Step Guide)

Many sci-fi movies have unleashed the idea of robots taking over the world. And we always thought to ourselves, “Naah! That isn’t happening anytime soon.”

However, almost half of the websites you visit today have a chatbot software to greet and engage you. In short, these little chatbots have already taken over the market.

If you want to hop on to the trend and learn how to create chatbots, you have come to the right place. Well-designed and intelligent chatbots can help you automate your customer service process, generate reliable leads, engage visitors, grow sales, and reduce agent workload.

In this article, we will touch upon the different types of chatbots and learn to build chatbots from scratch. We will also explain the steps regarding how to add a chatbot to the website and explore some chatbot-building best practices.

But first things first, let’s start with the basics!

Why Should You Make a Chatbot for Your Website?

To say that chatbots are in demand would be an understatement. As businesses look to embrace artificial intelligence and automate their customer service and marketing processes, the demand for chatbots is at an all-time high. Don’t believe us yet? Keep reading. 

Around 74% of consumers prefer using chatbots when they are looking for answers to simple questions. 

And what about the chatbot market? 

The global chatbot market is projected to amount to 454.8 million U.S. dollars by 2027, up from 40.9 million dollars in 2018.

Which industries are the most popular when it comes to website chatbot usage? 

Around 40% of US consumers state they have used chatbots to engage with the retail industry, compared to 20% who have used bots for financial services. 

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The truth is that marketing, customer service, sales, IT, HR, etc., all departments can benefit from chatbots. For instance, the customer service team can create bots to handle routine customer queries without creating tickets. Similarly, the HR team can build bots to allow employees to make leave requests. So if you are looking to build a chatbot for website, now is the time. 

What Are the Types of Chatbots You Can Build?

Modern chatbots can help you meet your different needs and goals. For instance, customer service teams can use a support bot to offer 24×7 assistance. Similarly, bots can also be designed to automate the appointment booking process. 

Here are some of the most popular types of chatbots templates you can build for your website: 

1. Customer Support Chatbot

Support chatbots can help you automate your support process and attend to customers 24×7, even when your team is offline. 

These bots are powerful enough to walk a visitor through any piece of information (think of product return policies, product pricing, demo, etc.) and can answer a wide variety of FAQ-type questions. You can even connect this chatbot with your company knowledge base and allow it to share links to relevant self-help articles during the conversation. 

Read More: 30 Customer Service Tips for Delightful Customer Experiences

2. Lead Generation Chatbot

Every website visitor is a potential lead. No wonder the entrepreneurs and marketers who realize this are turning to lead-generation chatbots.

These bots can spark a conversation with website visitors, ignite their interests, and capture relevant contact details such as email addresses or phone numbers. Once you have collected their contact information, you can store them in your favorite CRM tool. The sales professionals can then nurture these leads and convert them into paying customers. 

Read More: How to Use Live Chat Software for Lead Generation

3. Sales Chatbot

A sales chatbot is the way to go if your business wants to grow revenue without hiring additional sales employees. You can grab visitors’ attention by displaying and promoting your upcoming events, deals, or discounts in the chatbot widget. 

These bots can help you grow profits by sharing product recommendations with customers and upselling complementary products based on their recent purchases. Sales chatbots can even answer sales-related questions or transfer the chat to an agent who can close the deal. 

Read More: How to Increase Online Sales Using Live Chat

4. Appointment Booking Chatbot

There was a time when businesses had to hire a professional receptionist to handle calls related to bookings, but not anymore. With the help of appointment booking chatbots, you can automate this process and allow customers to book appointments directly from your website. 

These bots can show visitors all the available slots, help them choose one as per their convenience, and schedule their appointment within seconds. Once the chat is about to end, the bot can confirm the appointment details to avoid any confusion in the future. Moreover, customers can even choose to receive appointment details in their emails. 

How to Create a Chatbot for a Website (Step-by-Step)

Different chatbot builders can help you build chatbots in different ways. In this section, we have taken the example of ProProfs Chat to show you how to make a bot for your website. 

The tool allows you to automate live chat on your website using simple steps and frees your human staff members, allowing them to focus on critical issues. 

Step 1: In your ProProfs Chatbot account, navigate to Bots and click the ‘Create a Bot’ button. 

Step 2: From the new dashboard, you can pick from a wide range of templates – lead generation, customer support, appointment booking, etc. If you don’t want to use templates, you can choose ‘Create from scratch.’ 

Step 3: Now, you will see a chatbot builder interface where you can give your bot a name and build interactions. Just click anywhere on the box to open the interaction panel. 

Step 4: From the interaction panel, you can customize the interaction and add chatbot responses. For example, you can add the opening message for the visitor, such as “Hi! I am your virtual assistant. How can I help you today?” Once you are happy with the message, you can click ‘Save.’ You can even choose to see how your message will appear to the visitor with the ‘Preview’ icon. 

Step 5: Now, you can create the complete chatbot script based on the current message and anticipated response. Click on the + button as shown below.

For example, in the next step, you may ask the visitor’s name. The visitor must type their name before moving on to the next step. You can choose a Response Type (multiple choice, text response, or date & time). The following screenshot shows the interaction flow thus far.

Step 6: Likewise, you can click on the + button to build the conversation further or Finish to save the chatbot script. Here’s an example of how the chatbot message will appear to the visitor. 

How to Add a Chatbot to Your Website

Now that we know how to create a chatbot, it’s time to add it to your website. A well-designed bot can help you engage website visitors, offer real-time assistance, and keep operators free for high-priority issues. 

Adding a chatbot to website is super easy. You can do so in simple steps. 

Step 1: Go to your ProProfs Chat dashboard and click ‘Settings.’ 

Step 2: Navigate to ‘Installation’ on this panel and copy the code. Now, paste this code to your website.

Step 3: Now go to the ProProfs dashboard, select ‘Operators,’ and then select ‘Bots’ from the left panel. This page shows you all the bots you have created. 

Step 4: The moment you enable a bot, it gets added to your website by default. ProProfs gives you multiple options when it comes to how you want to display the chatbot. For example, you can enable it on a specific URL, skip a URL but display it everywhere else, or display it when the URL contains a specific keyword.

You also have the option to display the chatbot as Online, Offline, or Always. 

You can always ‘Preview’ your chatbot to see how it will appear to visitors. 

Do’s & Don’ts of Building a Chatbot

Whether you have already implemented a chatbot on your website or are planning to do so, there are multiple challenges that can make your efforts go down the drain. 

Here are some do’s and don’t of chatbot building that will help you achieve success: 

Do’s of Building a Chatbot

1. Collect Data for Consistent Improvements

Even after you have implemented your chatbot, there is always room for improvement. Naturally, you would want to improve your bot from time to time so that it can meet customer expectations and needs better. With the right data at your fingertips, you can add effective branches to your chatbot script, improve the quality and efficacy of responses, and delight customers. 

2. Keep Your Budget in Mind

If you are hiring a software development company to build chatbots according to your unique needs, it can cost you thousands of dollars. On the other hand, using an online chatbot builder is a much cheaper alternative. You will have to pay a nominal monthly subscription fee and build your chatbot in minutes. 

3. Give an Interesting Personality to Your Chatbot

Chatbots with a unique personality of their own can make an emotional connection with prospects and customers. When you create your own chatbot, make sure it is relevant to your target audience and makes your brand stand out.  

Bonus Example: Lemonade Insurance’s Chatbot – Maya

Lemonade Insurance offers insurance services to homeowners and renters. To automate customer onboarding, the company built a chatbot and gave it a unique name (Maya) as well as personality. Maya is designed to assist customers with any questions they may have, send email confirmations, and offer app walkthroughs. The best part is that Maya has a great sense of humor. 

Source

Don’ts of Building a Chatbot

1. Sharing Impersonal Responses

Impersonal responses can frustrate customers and make them avoid your business altogether. When the bot shares copy-pasted responses, the conversation lacks an emotional depth. Therefore, you must look to add a dose of personalization in chatbot scripts, such as including the customer’s name, mentioning their past orders, etc. 

2. Making Things Complicated

If a person has to answer multiple questions just to get the desired answer, it can lead to a poor experience. Avoid making simple things complicated for your audience. Instead, you must keep chatbot responses small, use simple language, and avoid asking too many questions. Simplifying your chatbot’s UI and language will go a long way in keeping customers happy. 

3. Not Accepting When a Solution Isn’t Available 

While interacting with a website chatbot, you must have encountered a situation where you got a response that had nothing to do with your question. When designing chatbots, it’s important to ensure the steps it will take when it has no relevant information. In such a case, the best thing to do is be honest and give customers the option to connect with a chat operator or choose a different communication channel. 

Build a Chatbot Today & Delight Customers! 

From startups to million-dollar companies – businesses are heavily investing in chatbot technology. Today, chatbots combined with well-trained human operators are a winning formula for any business.

In this blog, we have discussed simple steps on how to build chatbots from scratch and add them to your website. To make the most of this technology, you must collect data for consistent improvements, give an interesting personality to your bot, and make personalization a top priority. 

If you are looking to build a powerful chatbot today, ProProfs Chat can be your ideal solution. You can get started with pre-designed templates or create a chatbot from scratch. Ready to automate customer communications?