Training a website chatbot doesn't mean writing scripts or conversation trees. The agent reads your pages, and you fix what it gets wrong by adding answers. This guide shows how ReplyBash does it, from the first scan to keeping the agent up to date.
The idea is simple: the agent answers only from what you gave it, says when it doesn't know, and shows the page each answer came from. Your job is to give it good material and close the gaps.
1. Scan your site
During onboarding, on the Website step, enter your Website URL and click Scan site. ReplyBash looks for your sitemap (from robots.txt or /sitemap.xml) and groups your pages into sections. A site without a sitemap starts from the home page and follows links.
ReplyBash reads public pages only, and it respects robots.txt. Its crawler is called ReplyBashBot, so if your site blocks unknown bots, allow it by adding the user agent to robots.txt.
2. Pick what to read
Under What should we read? you see each section of your site with its page count. Everything is on by default (Entire website). Turn off what visitors don't ask about: old news posts, tag archives, login pages.
Your plan sets how many pages are read per agent: 50 on Free, 500 on Starter, 2,000 on Pro and 10,000 on Business. If your site has more, the screen says how many are over the limit, and you choose which sections to keep. Click Start reading.
Pages the agent should lean on, in order of value: pricing, services or products, contact and opening hours, FAQs, shipping and returns, policies.
3. Add what isn't on your pages
Many answers live in files, not web pages: price lists, brochures, forms, terms. Under Add documents on the Website step, or under Files & Q&A › Files later, upload PDF, DOCX, TXT, MD or CSV files. Each is read within a minute or so, and shows Trained when done.
A fact that isn't anywhere, such as "Home collection starts at 6 AM every day, including Sundays", goes under Files & Q&A › Text snippets. Click Add, type the fact and save. The agent can use it right away.
Some sites build their text in the visitor's browser, and the crawler can't read it. The Website step tells you how many such pages it found. Upload that content as a file, or as snippets, instead.
4. Test it before visitors do
Open Playground and chat with the draft agent. Ask the ten questions your customers ask most. For each answer, check that it is right and that the source link points to the correct page.
Playground also holds your instructions: what your business does, the role the agent plays and how it should write. Start from a template (Support assistant, Sales assistant, Bookings), fill in the brackets and click Save to agent. View full prompt shows exactly what the agent is told.
5. Fix gaps with Q&A
When the agent can't find an answer, it says so and counts the question as unanswered. On Overview, the Unanswered questions list groups the same question asked in different words.
- Open Overview and find the question under Unanswered questions.
- Click Answer, write the reply and save. This creates a Q&A pair.
- Open Files & Q&A and, if it says an answer isn't live yet, click Retrain agent.
- Ask the question again in Playground to check.
A Q&A pair overrides website content and is used word for word, so write it as you want visitors to read it. Use Q&A for fixed answers (prices, policies), and snippets for background facts the agent can phrase itself.
6. Keep it up to date
Websites change. Open Website sources to see every page with its status (Trained, Pending, Failed) and when it was last synced.
- Sync all re-reads the whole site. On the Free plan, press it after you change your site.
- Paid plans re-crawl your site every day at 03:00 UTC, and skip pages that haven't changed.
- Re-sync page, on a page's menu, re-reads one page. Add pages adds pages missing from your sitemap, one URL per line.
- Exclude from training removes a page from the agent's knowledge without deleting it, and Include again brings it back.
- Under Add pages › Advanced options you can include or exclude paths such as /docs/*.
Write your pages so the agent can use them
The agent is only as good as the pages behind it. A few habits make answers clearer, and they help visitors and search engines too.
- Put one topic on one page, with a heading that matches the question. A page called Home collection answers home collection questions; a page that mixes ten topics answers none of them well.
- Write prices and times as text, not inside images. The agent can't read a price list that is a picture, so upload it as a PDF or CSV, or add it as text.
- Say it once, in one place. If two pages give different opening hours, the agent may quote either. Fix the page, then press Re-sync page.
- Keep old offers off the site, or exclude them. An expired discount page stays in the agent's knowledge until you remove or exclude it.
- Add a short FAQ page with the questions your team answers by phone. It is the quickest way to improve answers, and a page visitors can find on Google as well.
A weekly habit that works
Spend ten minutes a week on Overview and Analytics. Answer the new unanswered questions, check the top questions, and read two or three conversations from the inbox. After a month most of the gaps close, and you'll know which pages your site should say more about: each unanswered question is a page visitors couldn't find.
Ready to try it? Start free, or see how the agent is set up in the quickstart. If you run WordPress, add the chatbot to WordPress takes about 10 minutes.