Proactive messages

Most visitors browse quietly and leave without ever opening the chat. Proactive campaigns turn that around: after someone stays on a page for a while, the widget shows a short message next to the launcher, written for that page. Selecting the message opens the chat with your message as the agent's opener, so the visitor can reply right away.

Proactive messages work with the chat bubble launcher on your website widget. They do not appear when the widget uses the agent search bar display style, and they never interrupt a chat that is already open.

Create a campaign

1. Open Widget → Appearance for the selected agent and select the Proactive tab.
2. Select New campaign.
3. Fill in the campaign:
   • Campaign name. Only you see this, for example "Pricing page nudge".
   • Message. What the visitor sees, for example "Not sure which plan fits? I can help you compare." Write it for the page it targets; specific messages get far more replies than a generic "How can I help?".
   • Page URL contains. The campaign runs only on pages whose address contains this text, for example /pricing or /products/. Leave it empty to run on every page.
   • Delay. How many seconds the visitor stays on a matching page before the message appears (3 to 600 seconds).
   • Priority. When several campaigns match the same page, the one with the highest priority shows.
4. Select Create campaign.

You can run up to 10 campaigns per agent. Start with your highest-traffic pages: the homepage, a busy category or pricing page, and your best-selling product pages.

In the Shopify app

If you installed Fetchply from the Shopify App Store, you can manage everything without leaving Shopify: open the app in your Shopify admin, choose Extras, then Open proactive chat. It works on the same campaigns as the Proactive tab in your Fetchply dashboard, so a change made in one place shows up in the other.

Everything lives in one list:

• All, Active, and Inactive tabs narrow the list to the chats you care about, and the search box finds a chat by its name or its message text.
• View is how many times that message was shown to a shopper, Clicked is how many times someone selected it and started chatting, and CTR is the share of views that turned into a chat.
• Priority is the position each chat holds when several of them match the same page. Number 1 wins. To change the order, open a chat and edit its Priority value: a higher number moves it up.
• Proactive chat type names the moment the chat is set up to catch, worked out from the pages it runs on — for example a chat limited to /products/ shows as "Product recommendation", and one that runs everywhere shows as "Welcome visitor".
• Status shows whether a chat is live. Updated at shows when it last changed.
• The ⋯ button at the end of a row opens its actions: Edit, Set inactive or Set active, and Delete.
• Reload re-reads the figures, and the label beside it tells you how old the numbers on screen are. Nothing refreshes on its own, so rows never move while you are working in them.

You can run up to 10 proactive chats per store. The Create proactive chat button turns off once you reach the limit, and a note appears explaining that you need to delete one first.

What the figures cover

Views and clicks are counted from the moment a message is shown to a shopper on your live storefront. Both are running totals for the whole life of each proactive chat rather than figures for a chosen period, so they only ever go up. Each row carries its own figures; there is no store-wide summary above the list.

A dash in place of a number means there is nothing to report yet, not zero: a proactive chat nobody has seen has no click-through rate to show.

Sales are not part of these figures. Proactive chat does not currently report revenue or orders, because a purchase is not yet traced back to the message that started the conversation.

How visitors experience it

• The message appears near the chat launcher after the delay, on top of the page the visitor is reading. It uses the same chip style as your suggested questions, so it looks like part of the widget.
• When a proactive message is set to appear on a page, it takes the place of the floating suggested question chips for that visit, so the two never compete for the same spot.
• Selecting the message opens the chat with your text as the agent's opener on the welcome screen, with your suggested questions right below it, ready for a reply.
• Dismissing the message with the close button hides it, and that campaign will not show again on that visitor's browser.
• A visitor sees at most one proactive message per page visit, and a campaign that was shown waits a day before it can show to the same visitor again.

Measure and adjust

Each campaign row on the Proactive tab shows how many times its message was shown and how many times visitors clicked it. Pause a campaign with its toggle to stop it without deleting it, and edit the message wording whenever a campaign gets impressions but few clicks. In the Shopify app, the Proactive chat page shows the same numbers as a click-through rate per row, so you can compare campaigns at a glance.

Troubleshooting

The message never appears. Check that the campaign is enabled, that the page address contains the text in Page URL contains (an empty field matches every page), and that you waited the full delay on the page. If several campaigns match the same page, only the highest-priority one shows.

The message stopped showing while testing. Dismissing or clicking a message hides that campaign on your browser for good, and a shown message waits a day before reappearing. Test again in a private browsing window to see it fresh.

The message shows on the wrong pages. Make Page URL contains more specific. For example, /product also matches /product-guides; use /products/ to target only product pages.

My suggested questions stopped floating next to the launcher. On pages where a proactive campaign runs, the campaign message takes the place of the floating suggested question chips. The suggested questions still appear inside the chat window on the welcome screen.

No proactive messages with the agent search bar. Proactive campaigns only run with the chat bubble display style. Switch the display style on the Brand tab if you want proactive messages.

Counts are not going up. Impressions and clicks are counted once the message is actually shown to visitors on your live site. The dashboard preview does not add counts. In the Shopify app, select Reload to fetch the latest figures; the page does not refresh by itself.

I can't find revenue or orders for a proactive chat. Proactive chat reports views, clicks, and click-through rate only. A purchase is not yet traced back to the message that started the conversation, so no sales figures are shown rather than a figure that could mislead you.

I can't find Proactive chat in the Shopify app menu. It moved into Extras, alongside guided flows, COD verification, and functions. Open Extras and select Open proactive chat. Your campaigns and their figures are unchanged.

The Shopify app says my store is not connected. Proactive chat needs a linked Fetchply account. Open the app's home screen, finish connecting, then return to Extras → Proactive chat.

The list did not change after I saved. A save confirms with a short message at the top of the Shopify admin. If the row still looks the same, select Reload. If the save failed, the message says so and nothing was changed, so you can try again safely.