Everyone has met the bad version. You land on a website, and before the first paragraph has loaded a chat box slides up, a notification sound plays, and a cheerful message asks how it can help you today. You have not even worked out what the company does yet.
You close it. On the next page it opens again.
That experience has given the proactive chat greeting a poor reputation, which is a shame, because the good version is genuinely useful. Picture a visitor who has spent two minutes on your pricing page, scrolling up and down between two options. A quiet message saying "Not sure which package fits? Ask me" is exactly what a good shop assistant would do. The difference between the two is not the feature. It is when, where and what.
The pages that deserve a greeting
Start with page choice, because it matters more than wording. A greeting should appear where visitors are likely to have a question and where answering it could lead somewhere.
- Pricing pages: visitors here are weighing up cost and fit. A nudge about what is included or which option suits them is timely.
- Individual service pages: someone reading about boiler repairs or teeth whitening often has a specific question the page does not cover.
- Contact page: visitors are already trying to reach you. Offering an instant answer can save them waiting for a reply.
- Long guides with a clear next step: a reader who has scrolled to the end of an article on damp problems may well want to ask about their own wall.
And where to stay quiet:
- Checkout and payment: interrupting someone who is paying is the fastest way to lose the sale.
- Your homepage, most of the time: visitors are orienting themselves. Let the chat button sit there without talking.
- Careers pages, legal pages and account areas: nobody wants a sales nudge while reading your privacy policy.
- Pages people revisit constantly: a support article a customer opens weekly does not need to greet them weekly.
Timing: the seconds that make the difference
A greeting that fires on page load is interrupting. One that appears after the visitor has had time to read is responding. The same words land completely differently.
| Trigger | Feels like | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| On page load | An interruption | Almost nothing |
| After 20 to 40 seconds on the page | A helpful check-in | Pricing and service pages |
| After scrolling most of the page | A response to real interest | Long service pages and guides |
| On exit intent | A last useful offer | Pricing, quote and contact pages |
| Once per visit, not per page | Respectful | Every site |
Those time ranges are starting points, not rules. A page with a short, simple offer needs less time than a detailed comparison of three packages. Watch how long visitors typically stay on each page in your analytics, and set the delay somewhere after most people would have finished the first screen.
The last row is the one people forget. If a visitor dismissed a greeting on your pricing page, greeting them again on the services page two clicks later tells them you were not listening.
Writing a greeting worth reading
A good greeting is short, specific to the page and easy to reply to. A generic "Hi there! How can I help you today?" is none of those. It could be on any site, and it asks the visitor to do the work of thinking of a question.
Compare these for a hypothetical dental practice's whitening page:
- Generic: "Hello! Any questions?"
- Specific: "Wondering whether whitening would work on your teeth, or how long it lasts? Ask here."
- Too much: "Hi!! Special offer this month on whitening!!! Book now before slots run out, chat with us to find out more!"
The specific version names the two questions people most often have on that page. That makes a reply feel easy. Pair it with suggested prompts, the tappable buttons under the welcome message, and a visitor can start a conversation without typing at all.
In SpideyChat the welcome message, suggested prompts, proactive greeting and exit-intent greeting are set per assistant. If one section of your site needs a very different greeting, a separate assistant embedded only on those pages is one way to handle it. Whatever tool you use, check exactly which timing and page options it gives you before planning around the table above.
Exit intent without the guilt trip
An exit intent message appears when a visitor seems to be leaving. Done badly, it is the digital version of a salesperson blocking the door. "Wait! Don't go!" with a discount code is common, and it teaches visitors that leaving gets them a better price.
Done well, it is a last genuine offer of help:
Assistant: Before you go: if there's a question the page didn't answer, I can help, or pass it to the team to reply by email. Visitor: Do you cover Harrogate? Assistant: Yes, Harrogate is in our service area. If you'd like a quote, leave your postcode and email and the team will be in touch.
That visitor was leaving because of one missing detail. The exit message caught them just in time. For the wider topic of saving visitors who are about to go, see recovering visitors about to leave.
Keep exit intent to one appearance per visit and to high-intent pages. On mobile it behaves differently, since there is no cursor heading for the tab bar, so do not rely on it as your main nudge for phone visitors.
How to tell if your greeting is working
The measure is not how many chats the greeting starts. A pushy greeting can start plenty of conversations that go nowhere. Look instead at what those conversations turn into.
- Note your current leads and conversations per week from the pricing and service pages.
- Switch on a greeting for one page or section only, with a specific message.
- After two or three weeks, compare leads from that page, not just chat volume.
- Read a sample of the conversations the greeting started. Were visitors asking real questions, or dismissing it with "no thanks"?
- Keep it, rewrite it or remove it based on what you read.
Your analytics will show conversations, leads and ratings, which is enough to see the direction of travel. If the greeting starts lots of one-word conversations, the wording is too vague. If it starts almost none, the timing or page may be wrong.
What to do next
Pick the single page on your site where visitors most obviously have questions. For most businesses that is pricing. Write one greeting that names the top two questions people ask there, and use the gentlest timing your setup allows, so it follows reading rather than interrupting it. Add a couple of suggested prompts that match.
Keep the greeting off every other page for now. After a fortnight, read the conversations it started and decide whether to extend it. If pricing questions are the main thing it surfaces, turning pricing page visitors into enquiries covers what the replies should say, and the features page lists the greeting options available.