AI chatbot vs AI voice agent: which does your business actually need?
A practical comparison of text chatbots and AI voice agents for business websites: where each one wins, what they cost to run and which to switch on first.
Read the guideHow to add an AI chatbot to your website
Exactly where the script tag goes on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow and custom sites, plus what to prepare before you install anything.
Adding an AI chatbot to a website is a two-minute job. Making it useful is not. This guide covers both, starting with installation because that's the part people worry about and the part that turns out to be trivial.
The short version
Almost every AI chatbot installs the same way: you paste a <script> tag into your site, just before the closing </body> tag. That's it. No plugin, no app install, no platform migration.
<script
src="https://getparlix.com/widget/widget-loader.js"
data-client-id="YOUR_CLIENT_ID"
data-api-base="https://getparlix.com/api"
data-embed-key="YOUR_EMBED_KEY"
></script>
The data- attributes identify your account. Your embed key is designed to be public. It's stored hashed on the server and bound to the domains you list, so pasting it onto a different site won't work.
Where the tag goes, by platform
WordPress
Two options, depending on whether you're comfortable editing theme files.
Via the theme: Appearance → Theme File Editor → footer.php, immediately before </body>. If your theme has a Custom Code or Footer Scripts field in its options panel, use that instead because it survives theme updates.
Via a plugin: any code-snippets plugin that inserts footer HTML works. Paste the tag into a "footer" or "before body close" snippet and enable it site-wide. This is the safer route, because a theme update can't wipe it.
Avoid pasting it into a post or page with the block editor because WordPress will strip the script tag.
Wix
Settings → Custom Code → Add Custom Code. Paste the tag, set Add Code to Pages to All pages, and set Place Code in to Body – end. Give it a name so you can find it again.
Squarespace
Settings → Advanced → Code Injection → Footer. Paste and save. This applies site-wide automatically.
Shopify
Online Store → Themes → ⋯ → Edit code → layout/theme.liquid. Scroll to the bottom and paste immediately before </body>. Save.
If you'd rather not edit the theme, some Shopify themes expose a custom-code field under theme settings, which does the same thing.
Webflow
Project Settings → Custom Code → Footer Code. Paste and publish. Custom code only runs on the published site, not in the Designer preview, so don't panic when it doesn't appear while you're editing.
Framer
Site Settings → General → Custom Code → End of <body> tag. Paste and publish.
A custom site or framework
Anywhere you can render a script tag. In a plain HTML site, before </body>. In React, Vue or Svelte, in your index.html rather than a component, so it isn't mounted and unmounted with a route. In Laravel, Rails or Django, in your base layout template.
Common installation problems
It doesn't appear. Nine times out of ten the tag is in the <head> rather than before </body>, or you're looking at a cached page. Hard-refresh, and check the page source for the script tag.
It appears on some pages but not others. Your platform is scoping the code to specific templates. Look for an "apply to all pages" setting.
It appears in the editor but not on the live site. Publish. Webflow and Framer both need a publish for custom code to take effect.
The console shows an error about the domain. Your embed key is bound to a list of allowed domains and the current one isn't on it. Add it in your dashboard, and remember to include the www variant if you use one.
The part that actually matters
Installing takes two minutes. Everything below is what separates a chatbot people find useful from one they close immediately.
Decide what it's allowed to know
The best chatbots are narrow. Give it your price list, service descriptions, policies, opening hours and genuine FAQs. Those should be the questions people really ask, not the ones marketing wishes they asked.
Be wary of any tool that offers to crawl your entire website. It sounds convenient, and it means you can no longer answer the question "what will it tell a customer about X?" Your site has old blog posts, superseded pricing, and a careers page from two years ago.
Write down the answers nobody has written down
Every business has knowledge that only exists in people's heads. Parking. What to bring. Whether you can do a Saturday. Which services need a deposit. This is where most of the value is, because it's what people ask and what your website doesn't say.
Spend an hour writing these into a plain document and upload it. It will outperform anything else you do.
Set the boundaries before you go live
Decide what it must never discuss. For a clinic, that's anything clinical. For a law firm, anything matter-specific. For a retailer, maybe returns beyond a certain value. A good chatbot lets you list restricted topics and will decline them and take the customer's details instead.
Plan the failure path
The most important behaviour is what happens when it doesn't know. It should say so and offer to take contact details, so an unanswerable question becomes a lead rather than a lost visitor. If it instead produces something plausible, you have built a machine for generating misinformation about your own business.
Read the transcripts
For the first two weeks, read what it actually said. Almost every wrong answer traces back to a document that was ambiguous, out of date or missing. The fix is a re-upload, not an engineering ticket.
How long does the whole thing take?
- Installing: two minutes.
- Gathering documents: an afternoon, if you're organised.
- Writing down the unwritten answers: an hour, and the highest-value hour you'll spend.
- Setting boundaries and tone: thirty minutes.
- Refining based on real transcripts: ongoing, heaviest in week one.
Anyone quoting you "live in 30 seconds" is describing the installation and ignoring the work.
Next steps
If you want the platform-by-platform detail with the exact menu paths, see works with your site. If you'd rather understand what happens between a question and an answer, read how it works. And if you want to skip ahead and see one running on your own documents, book a demo.
See this working on your own material
Reading about it only gets you so far. We'll build an assistant on your documents and let you ask it anything.