AI chatbots can reduce support requests, collect contact details from interested visitors (lead capture), and answer customers 24/7. This article walks you through creating a chatbot with Alma and adding it to your website, step by step.
The entire process takes less than 30 minutes. By the end, you will have a working chatbot on your website, built from your own business information and ready to help your visitors.
What You Will Need
Before starting, gather these items:
- Your business content. This includes FAQ answers, product descriptions, pricing information, policies, and anything else you want the chatbot to cover. Text copied from documents, web pages or notes works well, because you will type or paste it into Alma.
- Access to your website. You will need to add a short piece of code (a JavaScript snippet) to your website. If you use WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, or another website builder, this is straightforward.
- Your brand details. Gather your brand colors (the six-character color codes, called hex codes, if you have them), the tone you want the chatbot to use, and any rules for how it should treat visitors.
Step 1: Create Your Alma Account
Visit Alma's registration page and create your account. The free trial gives you full access to all features so you can build and test your chatbot before committing to a plan.
After registering, you will see the dashboard. This is the main screen where you create chatbots, manage the information they use, and view reports on conversations (analytics).
Step 2: Create Your First Chatbot
From the dashboard, click to create a new chatbot. You will be asked for a few basic details:
- Chatbot name. This is the name visitors will see. You can use your organization's name, a team name like "Support Team," or a friendly name that suits your brand.
- Description. This is a brief internal note for your reference. Visitors do not see it.
- Website URL. This is the address of the website where the chatbot will appear. It helps set up the chat window on your site (often called the widget) correctly.
Step 3: Build Your Knowledge Base
This is the most important step. Your chatbot's knowledge base is the business information it answers from, so its quality determines how well the chatbot answers. Alma gives you two ways to provide it, and both can use material you already have:
Build a Drag-and-Drop Flow
By default, an Alma chatbot runs on a flow, which is a series of questions, answers and buttons that you arrange by dragging and dropping. Add your most common questions as steps and type the answer to each one. Organize them by topic so they are easy to manage later.
For a broader overview, read how a chatbot gets built and shipped.
Paste Text for the AI Add-On
If you add the optional paid AI add-on, the chatbot can also answer questions in its own words. Copy your FAQ answers, product descriptions, policies, and other information, and paste them into the field provided for your business information. The AI uses that text to answer visitors.
Copy From Your Existing Pages and Documents
If your information already exists in help articles, product pages, PDF files or Word documents, copy the relevant text and paste it into your flow or the knowledge field. Update it there when the original changes.
Start with your most common customer questions and their answers. You can always add more content later. A knowledge base covering your top 20 to 30 questions is a solid starting point.
Step 4: Set the Chatbot's Personality
The parts of a short lead conversation
- Message. The greeting says who you are and what the chat can do.
- Buttons. The common answers are buttons, so the visitor taps instead of typing.
- Collect Input. The bot asks for one detail and saves it to the lead.
- Add Tags. The visitor never sees this step. It labels the lead by its answers, so you can sort your Leads inbox.
- Message. The closing line says what happens next.
Decide how your chatbot should communicate. Consider these elements:
- Tone. Choose friendly and casual, professional and formal, or something in between, to match your brand voice.
- Greeting. This is the message visitors see when the chat window opens. Something like "Hi there. I can answer questions about our products and services. How can I help?" works well for most businesses.
- Behavior rules. Build any rules into your flow and the wording of your messages. For example, you might always suggest scheduling a demo for pricing questions, avoid discussing competitor products, or offer to connect visitors with a team member when the chatbot cannot answer.
Step 5: Customize the Widget Appearance
Make the chatbot look like part of your website:
- Brand colors. Set the primary color to match your brand. The chat widget, buttons, and message bubbles will use these colors.
- Widget position. Choose where the chat bubble appears on your page. Most visitors expect to find it in the bottom-right corner.
- Bot name and welcome message. Set the name shown at the top of the chat window and the first message visitors see when they open it.
Step 6: Test Your Chatbot
Before going live, test your chatbot thoroughly using the built-in preview feature:
- Ask your top 10 customer questions and confirm that the answers are correct and helpful.
- If you use the AI add-on, ask the same question in different ways to confirm that the chatbot understands each version.
- Ask something your information does not cover. The chatbot should say that it does not have the answer rather than guess.
- Check that the tone matches your brand and reads naturally.
If any answers need improvement, go back to your flow or knowledge field and revise the relevant content. You can test again immediately after making changes.
Step 7: Deploy to Your Website
When you are satisfied with how the chatbot works, add it to your website. Alma gives you a short JavaScript snippet to paste into your site:
For WordPress
Install a plugin like "Insert Headers and Footers" or "WPCode." Paste the Alma snippet into the footer scripts section and save, and the chatbot will appear on your site.
For Shopify
Go to Online Store, then Themes, then Edit Code. Open your theme.liquid file and paste the snippet before the closing body tag. After you save, your chatbot appears on every page.
For Squarespace or Wix
Go to Settings, then Custom Code or Developer Tools. Paste the snippet in the footer injection area and save, and the chatbot will appear on your site.
For Custom HTML Sites
Paste the snippet directly into your HTML files before the closing body tag on every page where you want the chatbot to appear.
Step 8: Monitor and Improve
Once your chatbot is live, keep track of how it is working:
- Check conversations daily for the first week. Review what visitors are asking and how the chatbot responds, and note any questions it could not answer.
- Add missing content. When the chatbot cannot answer a question, add the answer to your flow or knowledge field. Each addition lets the chatbot answer more questions.
- Track metrics. The Alma dashboard lists your conversations and your leads (contact details collected). On the Growth plan and up, the analytics page also shows conversation and message counts and the completion rate of each flow.
- Keep refining. A good chatbot improves over weeks and months as you adjust its content based on real visitor conversations.
Your Chatbot Is Live
In under 30 minutes, you have added a working chatbot to your website. Visitors can now get answers to common questions at any hour. As you continue to refine its content and review conversations, the chatbot will become a more useful part of your organization. Welcome to Alma.
Related reading: How to Add an AI Chatbot to Your Website, Chatbot Personality and Tone: Getting Your Brand Voice Right.
To start from a ready-made example, browse the template library.
