How to add live chat to Shopify
It takes one snippet and about two minutes. Below is exactly where the setting lives in Shopify, and the one thing that usually goes wrong.
Step by step
- 1In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.
- 2Next to your live theme, open the ⋯ menu and choose Edit code.
- 3Open layout/theme.liquid.
- 4Paste the Deskwhale snippet just before </body> and press Save.
Worth knowing: The snippet goes in theme.liquid, not in a section file — sections only render on the pages that use them, and your chat should be on every page, including checkout-adjacent ones.
Where the snippet comes from
Create a free Deskwhale account, add your site, and the dashboard gives you the snippet with your site id already in it. Nothing to configure first — the widget appears as soon as the page reloads.
What you get besides a chat bubble
An AI bot that answers only from the knowledge base you write — your prices, delivery times, refund rules — and hands the conversation to a person the moment the answer is not in there. You decide how far it goes: drafts your operators approve, answers only while nobody is online, or everything.
Visitors who close the tab get the transcript by email, and when they reply to it, the reply lands back in the same conversation instead of a mailbox nobody reads.