Should Your Chat Widget Show on WooCommerce Checkout?

For most WooCommerce stores the chat widget should stay available on checkout, but quietly: keep the button there for last-minute questions, and keep automatic greeting pop-ups off the page. Hide the widget completely only if it covers a field or the order button on a phone, or if you see it pulling shoppers away from paying. A question answered at checkout can save an order. A bubble that pops up over the payment form can lose one.

Here is how to weigh it for your store, and how to set it up either way.

The case for keeping chat on checkout

Checkout is where the last doubts surface. The shopper has decided they want the item and is now checking the details:

• "How much is delivery to my postcode, and when will it arrive?"
• "Do you take PayPal?"
• "My discount code says it's invalid."
• "If it doesn't fit, do I pay for the return?"
• "Do I need to create an account?"

If the answer is one click away in chat, they get it without leaving the page. If it isn't, many will open a new tab to look for your returns page, and some won't come back. We cover the most common one in discount code questions that stall a checkout.

A chat button that sits in the corner and waits costs very little. Nobody has to use it.

The case for hiding it

There are real reasons to take it off, and they're mostly about layout, not principle.

• It covers something on mobile. A chat button is fixed to a corner of the screen. On a phone, that corner can overlap a form field, a coupon box or the order button, depending on your theme. If it does, hide it on checkout.
• Pop-ups interrupt. A greeting bubble that appears while someone types their address is a distraction at the worst moment.
• You want a focused page. Some stores strip checkout of everything except the form, and chat is one more element.

A worry we hear is privacy: will the chat see card details? SpideyChat's widget script adds a button and a chat panel. It doesn't read your checkout form, and the conversation runs inside its own frame served from SpideyChat. Card fields from most payment gateways are separate again. Still, if your payment provider has rules about third-party scripts on payment pages, follow them.

A simple test before you decide

Spend five minutes on your own phone:

1. Add something to the cart and go to checkout.
2. Scroll through every field to the order button.
3. Note whether the chat button covers anything at any point.
4. Open the chat and ask your three most common checkout questions.

If nothing is covered and the answers are right, leave it on. If the button covers the order button, hide it on checkout. If the answers are wrong, the problem is your policy pages, not the widget's position.

How to set it up with the SpideyChat plugin

On WooCommerce the widget usually comes from the SpideyChat WordPress plugin, which has the controls you need.

To hide it on checkout: open Settings > SpideyChat and add /checkout to the Hide on box, one path per line. The plugin hides the chat button on that page and everything under it. The script isn't printed on those pages at all, so nothing loads there. You can add /cart too if you like, although the cart is often where answering a question helps most.

Two details from how the plugin matches paths:

• It matches by prefix, so /checkout also covers WooCommerce's order received page. WooCommerce adds endpoints such as order-received to the checkout page's address, which puts the confirmation page under /checkout. If you want chat on the confirmation page for "when will it ship?" questions, leave checkout visible.
• It won't accept / on its own, because that would hide the chat on every page. Use Show chatbot to switch it off everywhere.

To keep it on checkout but quiet: leave Hide on empty and change the proactive greeting instead. In your chatbot's settings in the SpideyChat dashboard, the proactive greeting has an Only on these pages field. It takes path prefixes, comma separated, and the greeting only pops up on pages that match. List your product and category paths there, and the greeting never appears over checkout, while the button stays available. Setting the delay to 0 turns the greeting off everywhere.

If you installed with a snippet instead of the plugin, you won't have the Hide on box. Our comparison of the plugin and a header and footer snippet covers that trade-off.

Answer checkout questions before checkout

Wherever you land on the widget, the bigger gain is answering the questions earlier. An assistant answers from what your pages say, so write the pages first:

• Delivery: costs by region, cut-off times, typical delivery days.
• Payment: which methods you accept, and whether you charge any fees.
• Discount codes: whether codes combine, what's excluded, when they expire.
• Returns: who pays return postage, the time limit, the condition required.
• Accounts: whether guest checkout is available.

Then the same answer is available on the product page, in the cart and in chat. Our guide to reducing checkout abandonment with instant answers has more on which questions matter most.

Be clear about the limits, too. SpideyChat answers from your published pages and documents. It doesn't see the shopper's cart, apply a code or look up an order. For order-specific problems it can collect the shopper's details as a lead (Starter and above) or open a numbered ticket for your team. Our guide to handling where is my order questions shows how to set that up.

Our default recommendation

Leave the button on checkout, keep the greeting to product and category pages, and run the five-minute phone test. Hide it on checkout only if it covers something. The WooCommerce integration page has the plugin download and setup steps.