Chat Button is a floating launcher that opens a small panel of channels. It links straight out to the apps people already use, with no third party script on your page, so nothing is loaded from anyone else and nothing tracks your visitors on the way.
Set one up
- Add Chat Button to any row. It floats, so where you put it in the layout does not matter, but putting it in a global footer means one instance rather than one per page.
- Set Position to one of the four corners, and replace Toggle Aria Label, which starts at Open chat, with wording of your own.
- Write the panel copy. Panel Header starts at Chat with us, and Greeting is empty, so the greeting line is hidden until you write one.
- Add a Chat Button Channel child for each way people can reach you, and set its Channel Type.
- Fill in Identifier with what that type needs: a phone number, a username, an email address or a URL. Give the row a Label and a Channel Color.
- Save, then open the page and click every channel. A wrong number is invisible in the builder and obvious to a customer.
The channels
Channel Type is WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Phone, Email or Custom URL. Each becomes the link that type expects: a WhatsApp deep link, a Telegram or Messenger username link, a tel: or a mailto:, or your URL untouched.
Prefilled Message is honoured by WhatsApp and Email only, because those are the two whose links accept one. Setting it on a Telegram or Messenger channel changes nothing, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on the wording.
Order the channels by how quickly you actually answer on them. A row that looks instant and is not is worse than not offering it.
Online hours, and what they really are
Turn on Enable Schedule, which the Divi 5 builder labels Online Hours, and set Start Hour and End Hour as whole numbers from 0 to 23. Outside that window the launcher hides itself. Three things follow from how it works:
- The check runs in the browser against the visitor’s own clock, so nine to five means nine to five where they are, not where your team is. If your hours are one timezone and your visitors are not, say so in the greeting as well.
- A window that crosses midnight works: 22 to 6 wraps as you would expect.
- Setting the start and the end to the same hour means always on, not always off.
This is a display gate rather than access control. The markup and your numbers are sent to every visitor either way, so do not use the schedule to hide a contact detail you did not want published.