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Conversation starters are the clickable prompts a visitor sees when the chat opens, before they type anything. Good starters tell visitors what the chatbot is good at and remove the “what do I ask?” hesitation.

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Add a starter

1

Open Conversation Starters

In your chatbot’s sidebar under Customizations, open Conversation Starters.
2

Create the button

Add a starter with a Button Label. Two behaviors are available:
  • Ask a question: leave the Link empty. Clicking the button sends the label as a message and the chatbot answers.
  • Open a link: fill in the Link. Clicking the button opens that URL, useful for “Book a demo” or “See pricing”.
3

Save and preview

Open the widget preview on your Dashboard page and start a fresh chat to see them.

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Show a starter only on certain pages

Every starter shows on every page by default. To make one page-specific, fill in the optional Show on pages field when you add or edit it. Paths use the same grammar as Excluded Pages:
  • /pricing matches that page exactly (trailing slash and letter case do not matter); /docs/* matches the docs page and everything under it.
  • Pasting a full URL works — it is reduced to its path. Query strings and #fragments are ignored.
  • Up to 20 paths per starter. Invalid entries fail the save with an error; nothing is silently dropped.
When the empty conversation view renders, SiteGPT matches each starter’s list against the page the visitor has open at that moment. The visitor sees the starters that match plus every starter whose Show on pages is empty, all in the order you configured. Some combinations that work well: Scoping only applies where there is a page. Channels without one (Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Crisp, and the rest) and any moment the widget does not know the page yet show every starter — scoping can hide a starter on the wrong page, it can never leave the widget blank. Followup buttons cannot be scoped; this is a starters-only field. Also available from the CLI (--page /pricing on starters add and starters update, and --clear-pages) and the API (a paths array on each starter).

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Writing good starters

  • Use your visitors’ own words: check Chat History for the questions people actually ask.
  • Three to five starters is the sweet spot. More than that turns a menu into a wall.
  • Lead with the questions that convert: pricing, getting started, and “talk to a human” patterns.
Starters appear at the start of a conversation. For buttons that appear after each answer, see conversation followups.