Getting a chatbot onto your website is the easy part. Pasting a script tag takes a few minutes, and the whole setup is usually done in under half an hour. Whether the bot turns out useful or embarrassing depends on something else entirely: what you teach it, and how hard you poke at it before anyone else gets to.
We've set up a lot of these bots with small businesses. Online shops, law firms, training providers, a driving school or two. What follows comes from those projects. The examples use My-Chatify, but most of it applies whichever tool you pick.
Step 1: Create the assistant
You start with a handful of plain decisions. A name, the language it greets people in, colours and logo so it looks like part of your site, and which AI model does the answering.
Keep the name boring. Something like "Support" or simply your company name works better than a cute mascot with a personality the bot can't keep up for long. The welcome message should say what it can actually help with: "Questions about opening hours, deliveries or returns? Just ask." People then know what to expect, and they don't try to book a table at your accountancy firm.
On language: the widget's interface is set to one language, but the assistant replies in whatever language the visitor writes in. Someone typing in Spanish gets a Spanish answer, even if all your material is in English or German.
Step 2: Add your content
This is where the real work is. The bot only answers from the sources you give it. It searches your material first and then writes the answer. If the information isn't there, it's supposed to say so instead of making something up.
You can feed it PDFs, Word documents, plain text, website URLs (it crawls the pages for you) and question-and-answer pairs. That last one gets overlooked, which is a shame.
Start with the 20 questions your team answers every day
The first instinct is usually to upload everything. The whole website, every brochure, the price list from three reorganisations ago. Understandable. Rarely the best start.
Try this instead. Sit down for half an hour with whoever answers the phone and the inbox, and write down the questions that come in every single day. In our experience it's almost always the same twenty or so. For a shop: where's my order, how do returns work, does this come in navy. For a tax adviser: which documents do you need for my return, what's the deadline. For a driving school: how much is the full licence, when's the next theory evening.
Write those answers as Q&A pairs, in the words you'd use on the phone. Then add your website and a few chosen documents. That way the bot handles what people really ask from day one, rather than knowing a great deal about things nobody asks.
Keep website content fresh
If your website is a source, the bot reads its pages. When prices or opening hours change, it needs to notice. Automatic re-crawling takes care of that, daily, weekly or monthly. Daily makes sense for a shop with a changing range. A law firm's site that changes twice a year is fine with monthly.
Step 3: Test it, then embed it
Before the bot appears on your site, try it out in the Playground. It's a private chat window where you can throw anything at it.
One tip that makes a real difference: don't ask the way you'd write it. Ask the way your customers type. Not "What are your weekend opening hours?" but "r u open sat". Not "What is your returns policy for footwear?" but "can i send the shoes back if theyre too small". Typos, no punctuation, half a sentence. That's what a chat window actually sees.
A few tests we run on every project:
- A question whose answer is definitely in the sources. Is it right, word for word?
- A question you know isn't covered. Does the bot admit it doesn't know?
- Anything with a number in it: a price, a deadline, a delivery time. Outdated sources show up fastest here.
- "I'd like to talk to a person." What happens next?
Once that holds up, embed the widget. It's one short script tag. It works with WordPress, Shopify, Shopware, TYPO3, Wix, Webflow, Squarespace and hand-built sites alike. You don't need a developer. If you can get into your website's backend, you can do this.
Mistakes we keep running into
Old PDFs
The 2023 price list is still sitting in the downloads folder next to the current one. The bot finds both, and which one it quotes depends on which matches the question better. That's not the AI misbehaving, it's the material. Tidy up before you upload. If you wouldn't send a document to a customer today, don't give it to the bot.
Sources that contradict each other
Related, but sneakier. The website says delivery takes 2 to 3 working days. The FAQ PDF says 3 to 5. Both were true once. The bot has no way of knowing which one wins. A simple rule helps: every important fact lives in one place, and that's where you update it. When you add a Q&A pair, check that it doesn't quietly argue with your website.
Forgetting the handoff
A bot can handle a lot, but not everything. A parcel that arrived crushed, a client with a tricky question about a filing deadline, someone who's simply annoyed. Those conversations need a human.
Decide in advance what happens then. In My-Chatify, the bot passes the conversation to your team when it gets complicated or the visitor asks for a person. Your team replies from the inbox with the full history in front of them, so the customer doesn't have to start over. That only works if someone is actually there, though. Decide who gets the notifications, and tell the bot what to offer outside office hours, for example asking for an email address so someone can get back to them in the morning.
Trying to do everything in week one
Appointment booking, a lead form, three different conversation flows and WhatsApp on top, all before launch. It rarely goes well. Start with questions and answers. Once that's running smoothly, look at the analytics and build from there.
After launch: read the gaps
The first two weeks after going live teach you the most. The analytics show which questions come up most and, more usefully, which ones the bot couldn't answer. That list of unanswered questions is your to-do list.
Sunday, just before ten at night. Someone asks whether the gift card can also be used in the physical shop. It isn't written down anywhere, and the bot says so. On Monday you spot the question in the overview, add a Q&A pair, and the next person gets an answer. In our experience that's how a bot gets good: from real questions, not from guessing what people might ask.
Set aside fifteen minutes a week for this in the first month or so. After that, a monthly look is usually enough.
If you'd like to try it
You can test My-Chatify for free, Playground included. Create an assistant, give it your twenty most common questions and see how it gets on. If you'd rather not do it alone, our team in Dortmund is happy to set it up with you.
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