Live chat: answering your own website's visitors

Live chat puts a chat window on your website. Your visitors type into it, you answer from here, and anything nobody picks up is emailed to you with the whole conversation. It is not our support chat — the person at the other end is your visitor, not ours, and they have no Zinn Digital® account.

Where conversations arrive

Live chat → Conversations. Everything live is in the list, newest activity first, with a preview of what the visitor actually said so you can see who needs you without opening anything. A conversation waiting for a person is highlighted and counted at the top.

Pick one to read it and answer. The moment you reply, the conversation is yours — the assistant stops answering that visitor, so you are never talking over each other.

Who answers first

If you have the assistant switched on, it answers straight away from what it knows about your site. It hands the conversation to you when it cannot answer, and immediately — without trying — if the visitor asks for a person, or the question is about an order, money or a complaint. Those are the ones you want.

When nobody is there

After five minutes with nobody answering, we email the conversation to the address you set under Live chat → Settings, with everything said so far. The visitor's message is saved the moment they send it, whether or not anyone is online, so nothing is ever lost.

When you are closed, or a conversation is waiting for a person, the chat asks the visitor for an email address, so the email you receive is a lead you can reply to. Set your opening hours in the same place.

Switching it on

Your chat starts switched off, and nothing appears on your site until you turn it on. You need two things: the web address your site is on (the chat only answers pages you have listed, which is what stops anyone else using your chat on their site), and either the key pasted into the Zinn® Chat WordPress plugin or the one-line snippet on any other site. Both are on the Settings tab.

⚠️ On WordPress there are two switches — the tick in Settings → Zinn® Chat on the site, and Show the chat on my site here. The chat appears only when both are on, and that is the first thing to check if it does not.

How it looks, and when you are open

The Settings tab also sets your colour and which corner the chat sits in, your logo, and your opening hours: pick your time zone, then the hours for each day. Outside them the chat asks visitors for an email address instead of making them wait. Leave opening hours switched off and it always offers to talk, which is what a one-person business usually wants. Your logo and opening hours are Premium settings: on the free chat they are saved, and they apply the moment the site is on Premium.

Each site's chat, set up on the site

Every site has its own chat. Open Sites, choose the site, then Live chat: the same settings, for that site only. A site with no chat yet has a Create this site's chat button; the new chat starts switched off.

Using the same settings on your other sites

Under Use these settings on your other sites you can:

1. Copy to other sites — tick the sites, press Preview the changes to see exactly what

will change on each one, then Copy the settings. A site with no chat gets one, switched off.

2. Export settings — download a file with this chat's settings and its logo.
3. Import from a file — choose an exported file, check the preview, then apply it. The file

works in any chat, in this account or another.

What copies: the colour, corner, the name shown to visitors, the greeting, the logo, opening hours, whether "Powered by Zinn® Chat" is hidden, and the chat's saved replies. Saved replies are made to match, so a reply the other chat has and this one does not is removed — the preview lists it first.

What never copies, because it belongs to each site: the chat key, the web addresses the chat runs on, the on/off switch, the chat's name, the address missed chats are emailed to, and whether the assistant answers.

What it costs

The core chat is free on every plan, and the free Zinn® Chat plugin comes preinstalled on every WordPress site we host. Premium is an upgrade, per site: unlimited people answering, transcripts kept for ever, saved replies, transfer between colleagues, opening hours and your own branding. It is USD 19 per site per month, from the same screen.

What it costs your visitors

Under 7 KB, and no requests at all until somebody opens it. A visitor who never clicks the chat downloads one small cached file and nothing else.