SmartWidget is the AI chat widget UK Jekyll businesses ship in the morning and have live by lunch. Paste your URL, review the AI knowledge base, drop the snippet into _includes/footer.html or default layout, save. Done. From £19 a month with multi-site from the Growth tier.
Jekyll gives you the website. SmartWidget gives the website a voice. The AI chat widget reads your Jekyll site, builds the knowledge base, and engages every visitor the moment they arrive. The install is a single JavaScript snippet pasted into _includes/footer.html or default layout. Five-minute setup. From £19 a month. Multi-site capable. UK GDPR compliant from day one.
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. Jekyll is highlighted first.
The SmartWidget setup dashboard is where you review and refine the AI receptionist for your Jekyll 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 Jekyll business — services, prices, opening hours, the way you handle out-of-hours enquiries.
On Jekyll sites, a single line of JavaScript can change the conversion economics of the whole site. The widget runs 24/7, costs £19 a month, never sleeps, and handles unlimited concurrent conversations. Compared to a human chat operator at £2,000 a month and 8 hours a day, the maths makes itself. Install on Jekyll in five minutes from _includes/footer.html or default layout.
This is the unified inbox for SmartWidget conversations across your Jekyll site (and any other site you run the widget on). Multi-site agencies use this dashboard to manage conversations across dozens of client Jekyll sites from one screen. Per-site filters, per-conversation tagging, full-text search across transcripts, conversation export, and direct integration with your Jekyll calendar and CRM are all built in.
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 _includes/footer.html or default layout, 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 Jekyll 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 Jekyll 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 Jekyll site immediately.
Remove the single line of JavaScript from _includes/footer.html or default layout and save. The widget disappears immediately. There is nothing else to uninstall from Jekyll — 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 Jekyll sites, each with its own AI personality, knowledge base and unified inbox. Particularly useful for agencies running client Jekyll sites or operators with multiple brand sites.
Yes. The widget is responsive by default and works on every Jekyll mobile breakpoint. The chat bubble sits in the bottom corner on every screen size and the chat interface adapts to mobile-optimised layout when a visitor opens it on a phone.
Yes. The widget integrates with Google Calendar, Outlook (Microsoft Graph), and the built-in SmartWidget scheduler. Visitors browsing your Jekyll site can be offered specific appointment slots and book directly inside the chat. The event writes back to your calendar with the conversation transcript attached.
A small number of Jekyll entry-level tiers restrict custom code. In that case, upgrading to a tier that allows custom JavaScript is the only path. If Jekyll does not allow custom code on any tier, SmartWidget cannot be installed — but this is rare. Almost every modern Jekyll Business or Pro plan supports it.
No. SmartWidget operates on monthly billing with no contract and no minimum commitment. Cancel any time directly from the dashboard with no notice period and no exit fee. The lowest tier is £19 per month, billed monthly, so the maximum risk on the decision is a single month's spend.
Live chat support inside the SmartWidget dashboard answers within minutes. The dashboard also contains a step-by-step Jekyll-specific install guide with screenshots and the exact menu paths. If the install does not work, support will remote into a screenshare and complete it with you.
The widget includes a configurable consent notice that integrates with the major UK cookie banner solutions including OneTrust, Cookiebot, CookieYes, Iubenda, and the platform-native banners on Jekyll where available. Consent state is respected — the widget does not initialise until consent has been granted on visitors in scope of UK GDPR.
The AI knowledge base is built from publicly accessible pages on your Jekyll site. Content gated behind login is not included automatically. If your Jekyll site has paid-content or member-only sections, the AI's knowledge will reflect only the public pages — which is typically what you want for visitor chat anyway.
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese are supported on the Growth tier and above. The widget detects the visitor's language from their first message and replies in the same language for the rest of the conversation. Particularly valuable for Jekyll sites serving overseas customers or operating in tourism-driven markets.
4.9 out of 5 from 199 reviews. A selection of install-experience reviews from real UK businesses.
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.
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.
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.
