1. Before you start (5–10 min prep)
A quick inventory. You do not need to write anything new for this step. Just notice what you already have.
The ones you are tired of answering yourself. These are the questions your assistant is going to pay for itself on.
Pricing, hours, location, main contact email or phone. If any of these are hard to find on your website, fix that first. The assistant learns from what is published.
What happens today when someone messages you at 9pm? That is what the assistant is going to replace or supplement.
2. Content to gather
The assistant answers from your business content. Broader and more specific content means better answers. You do not need to write an essay. Most of this is pulling together things you already have.
If it is published on your public website, the assistant can usually scrape it during setup. You do not need to paste it in manually.
Anything you normally tell customers over email, over the phone, or in a welcome packet (pricing details, policies, common clarifications) should go in as FAQ entries.
Shipping, returns, warranty, cancellation, insurance. These should be written down once and kept current.
Medical advice, legal advice, anything regulated. The assistant should admit it cannot help and offer a handoff.
3. Settings to decide before going live
Most platforms expose the same handful of settings. Decide each one deliberately rather than accepting the defaults.
Formal, warm, direct. For a dentist, warm-and-reassuring. For a law firm, professional-and-careful. For a pedal builder, casual. Match the website voice.
When does the assistant ask for a name and contact? Too aggressive and visitors bail. Too passive and leads leak out. A good default: ask after the assistant has answered something useful, not before.
Will you take over conversations from your phone? If yes, turn on push notifications and test one. If no, the assistant should capture contact info for later follow-up instead of pretending a person is available.
Capture contact and promise a reply? Offer a scheduling link? Just let the assistant keep answering? Pick one and make sure the assistant knows which mode is active.
4. Installation (the short part)
This is almost always a one-line addition to your website. The details vary by platform but the shape is the same.
In your site's <head> or footer, however your platform lets you add a global script. WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, custom HTML: all support this.
Verify the widget loads, the assistant answers, and nothing visually breaks on your site. Most platforms let you preview before publishing.
About 60 percent of visitors are on phones. Make sure the chat widget does not cover important page content when it opens.
5. What to test before launch
Five minutes of testing catches most of the embarrassing issues.
Ask the assistant the questions you hear most often. Are the answers accurate? Are they in the right tone?
Ask something the assistant should not know. Does it admit uncertainty or does it guess? Guessing is a red flag.
Something that sounds like a real buyer ("how much does it cost and when can I start"). Does the lead-capture flow fire cleanly? Does your test contact info arrive in the dashboard?
Say "can I talk to someone?" and check that the handoff works. If you are the owner, do you get a notification?
6. First-week review
After a week of live traffic, do this once and you will catch most of what needs adjustment.
Not for tone. For accuracy. Are there any answers that are wrong, incomplete, or off-topic?
If the assistant said "I am not sure" to the same question multiple times, that question needs to be in your FAQ.
Owners usually know within 10 conversations whether the assistant sounds like their brand. Small tone tweaks are almost always worth it.
Platform-specific setup
The checklist above is platform-agnostic. For the specific steps on WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix, see the platform-specific guides. They cover the exact click paths.