SmartWidget loads asynchronously on Ghost with a Shadow DOM that isolates its styling. Lighthouse scores unaffected. CLS at zero. The snippet goes into Code Injection > Site Footer and the widget is live the moment the page saves. From £19 a month, UK built.
An AI chat widget for Ghost is not a chatbot. The difference matters. A chatbot replies from a fixed script and fails the moment a visitor asks something the script does not cover. The widget reads your Ghost site, understands the question, and answers in natural language with your tone of voice. SmartWidget installs on Ghost via Code Injection > Site Footer in five minutes flat. £19/mo. UK built.
The full install end-to-end. Five steps, about five minutes from signup to the first answered visitor.
The exact panel and field to paste the snippet on every supported platform. Ghost is highlighted first.
The SmartWidget setup dashboard is where you review and refine the AI receptionist for your Ghost site. The AI reads your site during signup, builds a draft set of question-and-answer pairs, and presents them in the dashboard for review. You edit anything that needs refining, add answers to gaps, set the tone of voice, and configure escalation rules. The dashboard is where the AI is shaped to match your specific Ghost business — services, prices, opening hours, the way you handle out-of-hours enquiries.
Owners of Ghost sites typically spend significant effort getting visitors to the site — SEO, ads, content, social. Then those visitors arrive and have no way to engage in real time. The widget is the missing piece. It engages every visitor instantly, qualifies the enquiry, captures the contact details, and alerts you on SMS the moment a high-intent lead lands. Five-minute install on Ghost. From £19/mo.
Every visitor your Ghost site receives has a conversation that lands in this inbox. Some are auto-handled by the AI in under eight seconds and you never need to look at them — they appear in the Completed tab. Others are escalated to you in real time, with an SMS ping to your mobile. Others again you choose to take over for relationship reasons. The inbox is the operating console for the widget on your Ghost site, and it scales from one site to many.
Conversation transcripts and visitor contact data are retained for 30 days after cancellation, then deleted permanently. Within that 30-day window you can export the full transcript archive and the contact database as CSV from the dashboard. The widget snippet on your Ghost site stops loading immediately on cancellation.
No. The widget loads asynchronously after the page has rendered. The bundle is under 30KB. There is no impact on Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, or First Input Delay. Lighthouse audit before and after the install on a Ghost site typically shows zero score change.
Yes. The dashboard supports WhatsApp Business API integration for escalations. When the AI flags a high-intent enquiry on your Ghost site, it can send you a WhatsApp message with the visitor's details and the conversation context. The integration runs on top of the standard email and SMS escalation options.
The install on Ghost takes about five minutes end-to-end. You sign up at smartwidget.co.uk, paste your Ghost site URL so the AI can read it, review the auto-generated answers, copy the JavaScript snippet, paste it into Code Injection > Site Footer, and save. The widget is live and answering visitors the moment the page saves.
No. The Ghost install is one line of JavaScript pasted into Code Injection > Site Footer. If you can navigate your Ghost admin dashboard, you can complete the install. The walkthrough on the SmartWidget dashboard shows the exact menu path for Ghost with screenshots.
No. SmartWidget loads asynchronously and isolates its CSS inside a Shadow DOM, so it cannot affect your Ghost theme's styling, animations, or layout. It also does not block page rendering. Lighthouse and PageSpeed scores are unaffected.
Yes for any Ghost plan that lets you paste a script tag or custom JavaScript into Code Injection > Site Footer. On a small number of Ghost entry-level tiers the custom code feature is restricted; in that case upgrading to the next plan unlocks it. Most Ghost Business or Pro tiers and above support SmartWidget directly.
No. There is no plugin for Ghost. SmartWidget installs via a single line of JavaScript pasted directly into Code Injection > Site Footer. Avoiding the plugin route means fewer dependencies, zero conflicts with your other Ghost extensions, and no plugin marketplace approval process.
A single script tag with your unique widget key. Around 200 characters total. You copy it from the SmartWidget dashboard after signup, paste it into Code Injection > Site Footer, and save. The script tag loads our widget client asynchronously when a visitor lands on your page.
No. The widget loads asynchronously after the page has rendered, so it does not block any of your Ghost site's critical rendering path. PageSpeed and Lighthouse scores are unaffected. The widget bundle is under 30 KB and lazy-loads its UI when the visitor first interacts with the chat bubble.
SmartWidget is UK GDPR compliant by design. Conversation transcripts are encrypted at rest in UK-based data centres. The widget includes a configurable consent notice that integrates with most Ghost cookie banner solutions, and the dashboard exposes the controls needed for data-subject access and deletion requests.
Yes. The widget appearance is fully customisable from the SmartWidget dashboard — primary colour, accent colour, chat bubble position (bottom-left, bottom-right), avatar, welcome message, and trigger behaviour. The customisation is centralised, so changing it once updates the widget on your Ghost site immediately.
Remove the single line of JavaScript from Code Injection > Site Footer and save. The widget disappears immediately. There is nothing else to uninstall from Ghost — no database tables, no orphaned files, no leftover configuration.
Yes. Multi-site is built in from the Growth tier. One SmartWidget subscription can run widgets across multiple Ghost sites, each with its own AI personality, knowledge base and unified inbox. Particularly useful for agencies running client Ghost sites or operators with multiple brand sites.
4.9 out of 5 from 199 reviews. A selection of install-experience reviews from real UK businesses.
Across roughly forty client sites the install is exactly the same — paste one line, configure tone, hand back to the client. The agency dashboard handles all forty from one inbox. Two clicks per onboard.
We run a WooCommerce store with twelve plugins already. I worried about JavaScript conflicts. The install was a single line in the footer and there have been zero conflicts in eight weeks live.
We host our own static site built with Eleventy and deploy via Netlify. SmartWidget is a single script tag in the base layout. Build pipeline rebuilt automatically. Live in nine minutes total.
The compliance review took longer than the install. Our IT director approved the JavaScript snippet in ten minutes and confirmed it loads async with no client data exposure. Install itself was four minutes.
My Weebly site is the cheapest plan that still allows custom code. SmartWidget installed via the SEO footer code field in five minutes. Now capturing weekend enquiries that used to go to voicemail.
My Carrd single-page site had no good chat tool option until SmartWidget. The install was the body embed field in Carrd settings. Six minutes from signup to my first answered visitor enquiry on the same evening.
SmartWidget installs cleanly on every major platform in this category. Explore install guides for related platforms.
Sign up, paste the snippet, save. From £19 a month. No card to start.
