Pre-Populating Webchat Forms for Custom Buttons

You can help website visitors start a text conversation faster by pre-populating the Webchat™ form fields, name, and mobile number. For your website to pre-populate form fields, visitors must either sign in or your website must store visitor information. A website administrator will need to add custom code to each button that has been customized to start a Webchat conversation.

To pre-populate form fields when custom buttons are clicked:

  1. Sign in to your website as an administrator.
  2. Edit your website’s HTML.
  3. Locate any custom buttons that have been programmed to start a Webchat conversation.
    customizingButtonsToStartWebchatConversation1.png
  4. Edit the code to include name or mobile number. Optionally, you can include a default message.

    <button onclick = "PodiumWebChat.open({name: 'John Doe', phone: '8017580580', message: 'I need help buying Podium.'})">Contact Us</button>
    prePopulatingWebchatForm1.png
Attention: The pre-populated form fields feature requires that your website store and pass personal information into Webchat, while the return visitor feature doesn’t. The return visitor feature uses browser cookies to pre-populate the form fields if a visitor has already submitted a question using Webchat. To learn more about the return visitor feature, read “Set up Webchat.”