You can set up a chatbot before your website exists by describing your business in plain words: what you do, who for, what it costs, when and where you work, and what customers usually ask. SpideyChat turns that description into knowledge the bot answers from, so nothing needs to be crawled. The one thing you still need later is a web page to put the chat widget on, and a single page on a site builder is enough.
Why a description works as well as a website
A chatbot trained on a website is not really learning the website. It is learning the facts written on it. When you set up SpideyChat by hand, those facts come from you instead, and they go into the same knowledge store a crawl would fill. Every piece is split into passages, and when a visitor asks something, the bot looks up the closest passages and answers from them.
That means a clear description is often better than a crawled site. A new business website is usually thin, full of headlines and stock phrases, and missing the practical details people ask about. A description you write for the bot can be all practical detail.
Four ways to describe your business
All four work without a website, and you can mix them.
Teach your bot. In the bot's knowledge section there is a setup assistant you simply talk to. It asks one question at a time, in everyday language, working through what your business does and who it serves, your products or services and prices, hours and location, how people reach a person, how booking, quotes or ordering work, your policies, your most common questions and how the bot should sound. When you press Save to knowledge base, the conversation is turned into organised notes. Only your own statements become facts; the assistant's questions are never stored as content, and it is told not to invent or round anything.
Paste text. If you already have notes, a price list in an email or a flyer you wrote, paste it in and give it a label.
Add Q&A pairs. For the questions you hear most, write the question and your answer exactly as you would say it. The guide on writing Q&A pairs that answer the way your team does covers tone and length.
Upload documents. A menu, brochure or terms sheet as PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown or CSV.
What to write: a checklist
Work through these headings. Short, specific sentences beat long paragraphs.
- What you do and for whom. "Mobile dog grooming for small and medium breeds in north Leeds."
- What you charge. Exact prices, what is included, and what changes the price. "Full groom for small dogs £40, medium dogs £50. Matted coats add £10."
- Where and when. Area covered, days and hours, and how far ahead people should get in touch.
- How to reach you. Email, phone, and how quickly you reply. If you are a one-person business, say so.
- How people order or book. Explain the steps honestly. The bot can tell visitors how your process works, and it can take their details for you to follow up, but it does not confirm bookings itself.
- Policies. Cancellations, deposits, refunds, delivery, guarantees. State numbers and conditions together: "Cancel at least 24 hours ahead for a full refund of your deposit."
- The questions you already get. Look at your messages, comments and calls from the last month. Each repeated question deserves a direct answer.
- What you do not do. "We don't groom large breeds" saves a disappointed enquiry.
Two worked examples
These are hypothetical businesses, written the way we would suggest.
A home bakery taking cake orders:
"We bake celebration cakes to order from our home kitchen in Bristol. Orders need at least 7 days' notice, or 3 weeks for wedding cakes. A 6-inch cake serving 12 starts at £45; an 8-inch cake serving 20 starts at £65. Custom decorations are quoted after you send a picture. We take a 50% deposit to confirm an order, which is refundable if you cancel at least 5 days before collection. Collection only, Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm. We can make gluten-free sponges, but our kitchen handles nuts, so we cannot guarantee any cake is nut-free."
A freelance bookkeeper:
"I do bookkeeping and VAT returns for sole traders and small limited companies in the UK, using Xero or QuickBooks. Monthly bookkeeping starts at £120 a month for up to 100 transactions. I don't do payroll or company accounts, but I can recommend an accountant who does. I reply to emails within one working day. To get started, send me your business type, your rough monthly transaction count and which software you use."
Notice what both do: exact numbers, conditions beside the rule, clear limits, and a next step. The bot can answer most first questions from either one.
Setting the bot's voice and first message
Two fields in the bot's settings sit beside the knowledge. The welcome message is the first thing a visitor sees, so make it specific: "Hi, ask me about cake sizes, prices or lead times." The persona and instructions field shapes how the bot speaks, such as "Friendly and brief, use British spelling."
Then test it. The dashboard has a preview that opens the chat on its own, so you can ask the questions customers will ask before anyone else sees it. Once it has knowledge to work from, the bot answers only from what you gave it and says when it does not know, rather than guessing. Questions it could not answer are logged as knowledge gaps for you to fill. Do not skip adding knowledge, though: a bot with nothing to work from falls back to general answers about businesses like yours.
If writing the questions is the hard part, our free AI FAQ generator takes a short description of a business and drafts ten questions and answers. Edit them for accuracy before you use them.
When you do get a website
The chat widget is installed by pasting one script tag into a web page, so it needs a page to live on. That can be a single page on Wix, Squarespace, WordPress or any builder that accepts custom code. The install guide has the steps for each. Everything you taught the bot carries over, and if you later add more pages, you can crawl them on top.
Start before the site is ready
Getting the description right now means your first website visitors get answers from day one. Create a free account, choose to set the bot up by hand instead of from a website, and spend twenty minutes with the setup assistant.