# How to Add an AI Chatbot to Your WordPress Site in 5 Minutes (Free) > A practical, no-jargon walkthrough for adding a real AI chatbot to any WordPress site in 5 minutes — free tier, no credit card, multilingual (English, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin, Tamil). Capture leads 24/7 without writing a line of code. If you're running a WordPress site for a small business, an AI chatbot is the single biggest leverage move you can make this week. Not because chatbots are hot. Because they let you **capture leads 24/7 while you sleep**, and the version of "having a chatbot" that small businesses can actually afford finally shipped this year. This guide walks you through the whole thing — signup, install, configuration, and your first lead — in about 5 minutes of clicking. We'll use [ObieChat](https://obiechat.obieonline.com) (which is what we make) because it's the only chatbot platform designed for Malaysian small businesses — including proper Bahasa Malaysia that doesn't slip into Indonesian. The steps work conceptually for any modern AI chatbot. ## Why bother (a 30-second business case) A few industry-rough numbers: - A meaningful share of website visitors — often the majority — arrive outside business hours. - Without a fast response, most never come back. - A well-tuned chatbot typically captures a low single-digit percent of all visitors as identified leads — and a good one captures their **WhatsApp number**, not just an email. Math example: 1,000 visitors/month at a 3% lead-capture rate → 30 new leads/month, captured automatically, surfaced on WhatsApp where you'll actually see them. That's the case. The bot doesn't need to be a salesperson. It needs to answer the same 10 questions your visitors keep asking, take their phone number, and hand them off to you. Modern AI can do this — even on a fresh install with no training data — *if* you spend 20 minutes telling it about your business. Five-minute install. Twenty-minute knowledge setup. Once. --- ## Step 1 — Sign up (1 minute) Go to **[obiechat.obieonline.com/signup](https://obiechat.obieonline.com/signup)** and create an account. Email + password, no credit card. You get **20 free chatbot replies per month forever** on the free tier — enough to test thoroughly before you put it live. Verify the email link. Log in. You're now in the console. > **Quick aside on credits.** Each visitor message costs 1 credit (2 if they upload a photo — yes, the bot can see images). A typical 5-message conversation uses 5 credits. The free 30-day trial gives you 50 credits to play with. Paid plans start at RM 99/month (Starter, 500 credits ≈ 100 conversations); see [pricing](https://obiechat.obieonline.com/pricing) for Growth + Business tiers as you scale. --- ## Step 2 — Set up your business knowledge (5-20 minutes) This is the only step that matters for quality. **The bot is only as good as the knowledge you give it.** Spend 20 minutes here and you'll have a bot that genuinely answers visitor questions. Spend 30 seconds and you'll have a bot that politely says "I don't know" to everything. Open **Console → Knowledge**. Two ways to fill it in: ### Option A — Auto-scan from your existing website (fastest) If your business has any web presence — even a Facebook page — there's a **Scan website** option at the top. Paste your URL, click Scan, wait ~30 seconds. The platform crawls up to 12 pages and drafts a knowledge base from what it finds: - Service names + descriptions - Pricing (if it's on the site) - Contact details - Anything that looks like an FAQ Review the draft, click **Save knowledge**, done. ### Option B — Type it in directly Five sections to fill in: | Section | What goes here | |---|---| | **Business profile** | One paragraph about who you are + phone + email + address | | **Services** | 2-6 services with name, summary, what's included, who it's for | | **Pricing tiers** | Each tier with name, price, and what's included | | **General FAQ** | The 5-10 questions visitors actually ask. *"What are your hours?" "Do you serve KL?" "What's your refund policy?"* | For services, **add 2-3 FAQs to each one**. The bot quotes these answers near-verbatim, so it's the highest-leverage thing you can write. For pricing, you have two choices: publish actual prices and the bot quotes them, or leave prices blank and the bot honestly says *"the owner quotes case-by-case"* + captures the lead. Both work — pick based on whether you publish prices publicly. ### What the bot will NEVER do This is important and competitive AI chatbots get it wrong: **the bot doesn't invent prices, services, or facts**. If it's not in your knowledge base, the bot won't make it up. Every claim it makes is cited under a tiny "ⓘ Why I said this" expander so visitors (and you) can verify which knowledge section was used. This is the most important thing to confirm before you let a chatbot near your site. Try asking your knowledge-empty bot *"how much for X?"* — a real bot will say *"I don't have specific pricing — let me get your WhatsApp."* A hallucinating bot will invent a number. Test before you trust. --- ## Step 3 — Install on your site (1 minute) Paste this snippet anywhere on your site (footer, child theme `footer.php`, or a page builder's "Custom HTML" block): ```html ``` Replace `YOUR-SITE-KEY` with your real site key (from the ObieChat console). Refresh your homepage. The chat bubble appears bottom-right. ### Where to paste it in WordPress The easiest paths, in order of preference: 1. **A header/footer code plugin** like *Insert Headers and Footers* or *WPCode* — paste into the "Before ``" slot. No theme edits. 2. **Your active theme's footer.php** — use a child theme so a theme update doesn't overwrite it. 3. **A Custom HTML block** on a specific page if you only want the bot on certain pages. The script is around 8 KB, loads asynchronously, **does not affect your site's CSS or layout**, and **doesn't affect SEO** — everything renders inside an iframe that Google ignores. Compatible with every WordPress theme and page builder we've tested (Elementor, Gutenberg, Bricks, Divi, Astra, GeneratePress). > A native ObieChat WordPress plugin is on the way (currently in submission to WordPress.org). Once it's approved, the install will be a one-click "Plugins → Add New → ObieChat" — but the script-tag method above works on every WordPress site today and isn't going anywhere. --- ## Step 4 — Add your domain to "Allowed websites" (30 seconds) To stop other sites from hot-linking your bot and burning your credits, every tenant has an **allowed-origins** list. ObieChat console → **Settings → Allowed websites**. Add both: ``` https://yourdomain.com https://www.yourdomain.com ``` (Yes, both. Browsers treat `www.` and non-`www.` as separate origins.) Save. If the chat bubble doesn't appear on your site after this step, this is usually the reason. The widget is silently blocked when the origin isn't whitelisted. --- ## Step 5 — Test it (2 minutes) Open your site in an **incognito tab** so you're not using a cached version. Click the chat bubble. Try these three messages, in order: 1. *"What services do you offer?"* — bot should describe your services from the knowledge you entered. 2. *"How much does it cost?"* — bot should ask for your phone number first (phone-first behaviour, on by default) then quote pricing (or honestly say "quote case-by-case"). 3. *"Can we book a call?"* — if you've set a [Cal.com or Calendly URL](https://obiechat.obieonline.com/console/settings) in Settings, the bot embeds the calendar **inside the chat** — visitors pick a slot without leaving the conversation. Now check **Console → Leads**. The test conversation should be there with: - The phone number you gave it - An AI-generated heat score (1-5 🔥) - A 1-line summary of what the visitor wanted - A copy-paste WhatsApp reply you could send right now That last bit is unique — most chatbots dump a transcript on you and walk away. ObieChat triages each lead and tells you what to say. --- ## What you've actually built You now have an AI assistant that: - **Speaks to visitors** in English, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin, or Tamil — auto-detecting the visitor's language from their first message. Bahasa Malaysia is genuinely Malaysian Malay (anchor words like *sesuai*, *boleh*, *bisnes*), not Indonesian translated as Malay. - **Captures leads** 24/7 with phone-first lead flow (the bot politely asks for a WhatsApp number BEFORE answering pricing questions — dramatically higher conversion than typical "do you have any questions?" bots). - **Sees images** when visitors upload them. *"My laptop showing this error, can you help?"* + screenshot → bot identifies the error, describes it in your lead notification. - **Cites its sources** so you (and the visitor) can verify it isn't making things up. - **Books calendar slots inline** if you connect Cal.com or Calendly. - **Forwards every lead** to your WhatsApp + email automatically. - **Improves over time** — visitors rate replies 👍/👎; you see what's working in Console → Insights. Free for the 30-day trial (50 credits). After that, RM 99/month for the Starter tier (~100 conversations/month), RM 249/month for Growth (~300 conversations + bigger knowledge base), or RM 499/month for Business (~700 conversations + priority support). --- ## What if I'm NOT on WordPress? Same `