Chat widget overview
Understand how appearance, installation, verified domains, behaviour, and automations combine in the visitor experience.
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The chat widget is where visitors meet Zeltino on your website. Although it appears as one compact experience, what visitors see and what happens next are shaped by several parts of the project working together.
This overview will help you understand those parts before you begin changing settings. You will also see a practical setup order and learn why the in-product preview is only one stage of testing.
In this article, you'll learn:
- Which settings shape the chat widget
- Which order to follow during setup
- When to use the preview and the installed website
- How domain verification differs from widget enablement
What shapes the widget#
The visitor experience is easier to manage when each kind of decision has a clear home:
- Appearance controls colors, shape, assistant identity, privacy text, and visitor controls.
- Installation provides the project-specific script, verifies websites, and controls whether the widget is enabled on each verified domain.
- Knowledge supplies the business facts used in answers.
- Behaviour controls voice, emoji use, additional communication layers, and excluded subjects.
- Escalation defines the human handoff form and its follow-up actions.
- Automations add suggested questions, chat flows, lead forms, meetings, contact paths, and routing actions.
These settings belong to the selected project. Confirm the workspace and project before making a change, especially if your account manages more than one website.
Recommended setup order#
You can return to any setting later, but following a simple order keeps the first test easy to understand:
- Add and test trusted knowledge.
- Configure the widget appearance and assistant identity.
- Define behaviour and human handoff.
- Add the website domain and install the script.
- Verify the domain and enable the widget there.
- Add simple conversion paths, then test the complete experience.
Preview and website testing#
The Appearance page includes a Live preview for visual decisions. It is the quickest place to compare colors, identity, and controls while you work, and the page clearly shows when those changes are still unsaved.
Use the installed widget for the final test because the website supplies the real page, viewport, styles, and visitor journey. This is also where page targeting, proactive triggers, links, forms, and other outcomes can be checked together.
Test on desktop and mobile widths. Check the launcher, open and closed states, text contrast, long messages, links, forms, restart control, and any enabled voice or email control.
Domain verification and enablement#
Installation has two separate controls that are easy to confuse:
- A domain becomes Active when Zeltino detects the project script.
- Enable chat widget on this website determines whether that verified website can display the visitor experience.
A verified domain can remain source-only when the widget is not enabled there. This is useful when you want Zeltino to recognize the website without offering chat to its visitors.