A quick guide to creating a no-code AI chatbot for your website

Lately, it seems like AI keeps cycling back into the public conversation over and over, and for good reason. It’s a useful type of tech if you know how to use it—but what if you’re an inexperienced coder who still wants to capitalize on the AI boom?

This is where no-code AI chatbots come in handy.

We’ll teach you exactly how to start creating your own no-code AI chatbot with no fuss and no extra steps. First, however, let’s cover some basics.

What’s a no-code AI chatbot?

Put simply, a no-code AI chatbot is a tool you can create without having to learn a programming language first. It ‘talks’ to customers and site visitors in much the same way a human being would.

For a more in-depth explanation, we’ll be splitting the term into two smaller ones.

No-code tools

First up is no-code tools. As their name suggests, these are used by people who don’t need to have any knowledge of coding whatsoever.

Often, this happens thanks to programs with user-friendly interfaces. These then allow you to tell the program what you want and receive a custom tool in return without you having to sit down and write that tool’s code out line by line yourself.

No-code tools are generally more accessible than their code-heavy counterparts since anyone can create them. They’re also highly customizable, as opposed to off-the-shelf tools that can’t be adjusted as much to suit your needs.

AI chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) powers modern chatbots. This AI works using machine learning models, which are trained on lots of samples of human speech and writing. The models then use natural language processing (NLP) as the basis for their own communication, which helps them sound more organic and less robotic in their interactions.

So, an AI-powered chatbot works like a machine but sounds like a person.

There are multiple kinds of AI chatbots, though they all share commonalities. Any chatbot works by picking up on keywords in customers’ messages and then generating appropriate responses from a pre-written set.

Why do you need a chatbot?

Aside from the fact that they’re a modern and highly popular tool, what makes AI chatbots so great in the first place?

The following key advantages make an AI chatbot worth it for your website, especially if you’re a small business with limited resources.

Availability to customers

Small business owners know all too well the struggle of trying to strike a balance between making sure customers can easily reach your company and not asking your small team to work at all hours of the day.

Chatbots are great at helping you with this.

A chatbot can be left active on your website 24/7. That means customers have access to it at any time, regardless of whether it’s a holiday or a weekend.

Plus, with an always-available chatbot ready to handle basic questions and requests, you can ensure that your customer service agents’ VoIP phone queues don’t ever get too long. That’s particularly important to businesses with fewer resources at their disposal.

Generating more leads

A business that can consistently draw in new leads and convert them into customers is a business that can continue to succeed. That’s doubly true for smaller businesses, which can’t afford to coast on the customers they already have.

Thankfully, AI chatbots are great at helping you attract new leads.

For one thing, the chatbots help them get answers to all their questions about your company in one place, helping to transform them from prospects into leads. There’s also the fact that an easy-to-use chatbot makes for increased customer engagement and a great user experience, which helps show how happy the leads would be as your customers.

Lightening the call center load

Few small businesses can afford to run more than one hosted call center. That means that you’ll want to maximize the efficiency of your call center, which is much easier to do with the help of an AI chatbot.

Chatbots can be a first point of contact for customers. This ensures the bots have a chance to address basic questions and resolve simple queries, drastically cutting down on the number of people who end up in the queue to speak with a call center agent.

Your agents will then also have more time to dedicate to complex queries. That human touch makes for a better customer experience, which in turn leads to more customer loyalty.

A step-by-step guide to creating no-code chatbots

Now that we’ve explored the advantages that come with using AI chatbots, it’s time to learn how to create one—without needing to learn to code first.

This quick and easy guide will help you get started in no time.

Step 1: Decide what kind of chatbot you want

From chatbots made to convert leads to fast food chatbots, there are plenty of different options available depending on what you’re after. That’s why exploring what exactly you’re looking for should always be your first step in creating a chatbot.

To do this, it’s best to write down what your goals are. Is your focus on driving conversions or retaining existing customers? How do you want your customer base to look?

Once you’ve set your priorities, you’ll be able to determine what you need from your chatbot to support those.

Step 2: Choose a provider

You’ll be designing your no-code AI chatbot using a purpose-built tool that lets you create exactly the kind of bot you want. This is how you’re able to avoid coding it by hand because you’ll be relying on an existing framework to make the magic happen.

That means your provider can make or break the whole project.

You’ve got to be completely sure that the no-code platform you choose can cater to your needs. Do they allow you to truly customize your AI chatbot from the ground up without using any code? Can they help you create exactly the type of chatbot you decided on in the previous step? How good is their customer service?

Also, what data does it need to function? Do you need to allow it access to your data, or can you provide it with the necessary information? If you want to replace or supplement your existing support center, legacy application migration could be useful. This will help you move your data to a cloud provider. 

Once you’ve found a no-code AI chatbot builder that gives you satisfying answers to each of these questions, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.

Step 3: Design your bot

This is the most labor-intensive part of the process. It involves all elements of design, including the graphic you’ll use to represent your bot and the text it’s going to be using.

Be sure your brand identity comes across clearly in all elements of your design. If your brand is quirky and fun, your chatbot should come across that way, too. On the other hand, a more fact-based or serious brand shouldn’t use a cute icon for their chatbot.

It’s also vital to remember to design for user experience first and foremost. Your customers and leads are the ones who are going to be talking to the bot, so their comfort and needs should be your top priority. Your bot needs to help them feel welcomed.

Consider utilizing a components library to streamline the design process. This can provide you with pre-designed elements and templates that match your brand, saving you time and ensuring a cohesive look and feel for your chatbot.

Step 4: Test, test, and test again

There’s no such thing as testing something too much.

You’ll want your chatbot to work in lots of different contexts without giving any of your customers a hard time or excluding any groups. You can only be sure of this if you’ve tested that it works under lots of conditions.

For example, can your chatbot run smoothly on all browsers or only on Chrome? Is it mobile-friendly? Do Android and iOS users get the same high-quality experience? What about non-mobile users with less popular operating systems, like ChromeOS or Linux?

A great tip here is to get members of your company to try and break the chatbot with questions. No, really—it sounds like a joke, but we mean it. If your employees can’t break the bot by asking questions to break it, then you’ve built a truly great tool that will support your customers optimally.

After all, you can never predict what your customers are going to ask.

Step 5: Deploy and gather feedback

Lastly, it’s time to set your bot loose, so to speak. You’ll want to deploy it on your website once it’s ready and then immediately gather information on how it’s doing.

In the world of web development and content management, WordPress remains a popular platform for many businesses. Integrating a no-code AI chatbot into your WordPress website can be a seamless process, enhancing user interactions and providing round-the-clock support.

The more feedback you get, the better because feedback helps you improve. It also gives you a sense of how you’re doing and how happy your customers are, which is always valuable information.

Small businesses, in particular, need to make sure their reputations are stellar, which means your chatbot should be fantastic. You can make that happen by improving it as per both your feedback and your raw data insights.

Take customer service to the next level with AI chatbots

Creating a no-code AI chatbot is one of the best ways to make your company more accessible to your customers. That’s immensely valuable for small businesses in particular since they need to build up a rapport with their customer base to keep succeeding.

One of the great things about chatbots is that they’re based on AI tech—which means they can always be improved upon and optimized. That lets you continue to grow and evolve as a business while taking your custom chatbot with you.

So, in short, it’s well worth it to create an AI chatbot. And the fact that it’s possible to do so without knowing the first thing about coding just makes the tech more easy to use.