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The onsite agent is an AI chat on your website. It answers shoppers’ questions, shows products as cards and, on Shopify stores, lets shoppers add products to the cart. Open Agents → Onsite Agent. The page has three tabs: Instructions, Tools and Appearance. Click Publish to save your changes. This page appears when your plan includes the onsite agent.

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Show or hide the onsite chat on your store

The Store visibility card, at the top of the Appearance tab of Agents → Onsite Agent, controls if shoppers see the chat.
  1. Select the Appearance tab.
  2. Turn on Show the widget on my store. The state changes from Hidden to Live.
The switch saves immediately. Publish does not change it, so you can prepare the chat before shoppers see it. The card also shows if TextYess detects the widget in your theme or on your site. If your plan does not include the onsite agent, the chat does not show on your store.

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Install the onsite chat on your website

You install the onsite chat once. After that, each change that you publish goes to your store automatically.
  • Shopify: on the Appearance tab, in Widget installation, click Open Shopify Theme Editor. Turn on the TextYess app embed and save. If your Shopify store is not connected, connect it first. See Install the onsite widget on Shopify.
  • Other platforms: copy the code in Widget installation. Paste it once before the closing </body> tag of your website. See Install the onsite widget on WooCommerce.
Then turn on Show the widget on my store in the Store visibility card.

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Where the onsite chat shows on your website

When the chat is Live, the chat bubble shows on every page of your store. On a phone, the chat opens full screen. You can also open the chat from your own button or link:
  1. On the Appearance tab of Agents → Onsite Agent, find Trigger & Visibility.
  2. In Custom trigger selector (optional), enter the CSS selector of your element, for example #ask-ai-btn.
  3. Optional: turn on Hide floating bubble. This option works only when a selector is set.
  4. Click Publish.

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Set the onsite agent’s name, tone and rules

On the Instructions tab of Agents → Onsite Agent:
  1. In Agent Name, type the name of the agent.
  2. In Tone Preset, select Friendly, Formal, Irreverent, Funny or Custom (AI-Generated). A preset fills Personality Description for you. The limit of Personality Description is 5,000 characters.
  3. In Operational Rules, write the instructions that the agent must follow. The usual limit is 7,000 characters. The counter under the field shows your limit.
  4. To let the AI write a rule, click Add rule, describe the rule, and click Generate.
  5. Click Publish.
For tips on rules, see Improve your AI agent’s answers.

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Onsite agent tools

The Tools tab of Agents → Onsite Agent has these tools:
  • Escalation to Human: the agent asks for the shopper’s email, so that your team can contact the shopper. Off by default.
  • Order Tracking: the agent looks up an order’s status. Shopify stores only.
  • Follow-up questions: the chat shows suggested follow-up questions after each reply. On by default.
  • Discount codes: the agent can show one of the codes that you allow, once in each conversation. The Allowed discounts list shows for Shopify stores only.
  • Dynamic Suggested Queries in PDP: on product pages, the chat suggests questions about that product. Shopify stores only.
Turn a tool on or off and click Publish.

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Hand an onsite conversation to your team by email

Turn on Escalation to Human on the Tools tab of Agents → Onsite Agent, then click Publish. When a shopper wants to talk to a person, the agent asks for their email address. After the shopper gives a valid email, TextYess passes the conversation to your team:
  • The conversation shows in Needs attention in the Inbox.
  • The team members who turned on Human support request in Settings → Account → Notifications get an email. It has the shopper’s email address, last message and the reason.
Reply to the shopper by email. You cannot reply in the onsite chat from the Inbox. The agent continues to answer the shopper in the chat. When Escalation to Human is off, the agent tells shoppers to contact your store directly.

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Which languages the onsite agent uses

The onsite agent answers in the language of the shopper’s message. If the shopper changes language, the agent changes too. The chat uses the language of your store page. If the page has no language, it uses the language of the shopper’s browser. The chat buttons and labels exist in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German. For other languages, they show in English. Your Badge Text, Dialog Title, Welcome Message and Popular Questions are translated automatically into the language of the page, for up to 12 languages. To write your own text for a language, open Message customization on the Appearance tab and click Customize a language.

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Change how the onsite chat looks

On the Appearance tab of Agents → Onsite Agent:
  • Bubble Appearance: Badge Text, Main Color, Text Color, Bubble Image (PNG, JPG or WebP, up to 5 MB) and Bubble Position (Right Center, Bottom Right, Bottom Center or Bottom Left).
  • Message customization: Dialog Title, Welcome Message and up to 3 Popular Questions. Click Generate with AI to let the AI suggest questions.
  • Display Mode: Modal (centered) or Sidepanel (right edge). For the side panel, select a Behavior: Overlay (panel sits on top) or Push content (page reflows).
Click Publish. The preview on the right shows your changes before you publish.

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Product cards and add to cart in the onsite chat

When a shopper asks about products, the onsite agent shows product cards with an image, the title and the price. View opens the product page. On Shopify stores, the shopper can select a size or a color and add the product to the cart from the chat. Add to cart works only with the Shopify cart. On other platforms, hide the add-to-cart button as the WooCommerce guide shows.

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Where onsite conversations show in the dashboard

Onsite conversations show in the Inbox, with the channel Onsite. They are read-only: you cannot reply from the Inbox. Under each AI reply, use Why this answer? and Revise answer to check and fix answers. See Improve your AI agent’s answers. Each AI reply in the onsite chat uses your plan’s AI replies. If no replies are left, the chat shows “The assistant is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.” See your Plan.

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Test the onsite agent before you publish

Each tab of Agents → Onsite Agent shows a Live Preview of the chat on the right. Type a question in the preview to test the agent. The preview shows your appearance changes immediately. The preview chat uses your unpublished Operational Rules. Your other changes, such as the name and the tone, reach the preview chat after you publish. Test chats from the preview do not show in the Inbox.

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How long until onsite changes are live

  • Look and texts of the chat: at the next page load on your store, after you click Publish.
  • Agent behavior (rules, tone, tools and Brand info): up to 5 minutes after you click Publish.
  • Show the widget on my store: at the next page load after you change the switch. You do not need to publish.