After the administrator completes initial configuration of the components in the Web Widget from the Zendesk Support interface and works with their developer to add the Web Widget to their website, they can work with their developer to further customize the Web Widget, if desired.
This article is an overview for administrators about what advanced customizations are possible with the Web Widget. This article is meant to answer the question, "what else can I do with my Web Widget?" It explains the customization process for administrators, and also points to developer documentation that web developers need in order to do the work.
If you’re a web developer (or an administrator who is comfortable doing website development on your own) and are looking for complete documentation about the API settings and commands described in this article, or additional code samples, see the developer documentation for the Web Widget API instead.
This article discusses these topics and widget customizations:
- Planning for Web Widget customizations
- Navigating Web Widget API documentation
- Displaying the widget in a different language
- Prefill forms with user contact information
- Disabling ticket attachments
- Re-positioning the widget
- Offsetting the widget placement
- Customizing the color of the widget elements
- Changing visible ordering in the widget
- Suppressing features on specific pages
- Customizing widget text
- Adding a subject line to the contact form
- Hiding the "View Original Article" button
- Limiting search results
- Customizing the Help Center search placeholder text
- Advanced configuration of Talk in the Web Widget
- Advanced configuration of Chat in the Web Widget
- Offering end-users multiple contact options
- Formatting code for multiple widget elements
For information about adding the Web Widget to your site, see Using Web Widget to embed customer service in your website.
For a complete list of Web Widget documentation, see Web Widget resources.
Planning for Web Widget customizations
Most Support administrators aren’t web developers and work with someone else to implement customizations to the Web Widget. They don’t customize the Web Widget and websites on their own. They work with a web developer at their company, or an outside developer that they use on a contract basis to implement the changes.
The web developer is the person who does the customization work, and they do it by adding some code (the Web Widget API) to the HTML of the website. However, the administrator still has a role to play in the work. They need to understand what customizations are possible for the Web Widget, and tell the web developer what they want.
Some administrators have experience with HTML and choose to do the customization work themselves, acting as their own developer, and that's fine. Either way, customizing the Web Widget is actually a process for the administrator that requires some planning and involves these steps:
- Review the information in this article to understand what advanced customizations are possible.
- Meet with key stakeholders at your company to create a list of requirements for your Web Widget. What colors do want to use? How do you want the Web Widget to behave?
- Prepare a list of the customizations you want. Be as specific as possible and include links to API documentation that your web developer can reference.
- Give the list to your web developer, who will customize the Web Widget by modifying the HTML of your website.
Navigating the Web Widget API documentation
Here’s some important information to help developers navigate the Web Widget API documentation on the Zendesk developer site.
Updated, organized developer docs and API syntax— The Web Widget API syntax has changed, and we’ve also reorganized the Web Widget API developer documentation to make it easier to find the command or setting you’re looking for. The documentation is now organized by product channel (Help Center, Tickets, Chat and Talk) or by core settings and commands. For more information, see the developer documentation for the Web Widget API.
New Chat APIs—For information about how the old Chat (Zopim) APIs map to the new Web Widget APIs, see Migrating from the Chat Widget syntax to the unified Web Widget syntax.
Displaying the widget in a different language
By default, the Web Widget embedded in a website displays text in the end user’s language, based on the language of their browser. For example, if the end user's browser language is set to de for German, the widget will appear in German for that user. If the widget is embedded in a Help Center, it displays text based on the Help Center language setting.
The Web Widget supports a subset of Zendesk's supported languages. If the end-user's browser language is not supported by the Web Widget, the widget defaults to English. If the widget is unable to obtain the language from the end-user’s browser, the widget defaults to the language specified in Zendesk Support.
You can customize the widget so that it always appears in a specific language using the setLocale command. This command sets the language for only the widget and doesn't override your host page’s language.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the setLocale command.
Prefill forms with user contact information
You can save visitors to your site a few seconds and some annoyance or frustration by prefilling their name, email address, and phone number into contact forms. This includes ticket forms, pre-chat forms, and Chat offline forms. Use the identify and prefill settings.
You can also set user information to be read-only using the prefill setting, which is nice because you can avoid having duplicate user accounts in Support for the same person.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the identify and prefill settings.
Disabling ticket attachments
If you have enabled attachments for your tickets, users can attach files to tickets submitted from the Web Widget, by default. However, you can disable this option, if needed.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the attachments setting of the contactForm object.
Re-positioning the widget
The default position for the Web Widget is the bottom-right of the browser; when a user clicks on the Web Widget, it opens by expanding upward.
You can select a location for the Web Widget that varies from page to page (placing it on the left or right side of the page, or moving it to the top of the page where it expands downward when clicked). Use the position setting to position the Web Widget in the top-left, top-right, bottom-left, or bottom-right of the page.
For more information, see the developer documentation about the position setting.
Offsetting the widget placement
You can use the offset setting to reposition the Web Widget on your desktop or mobile devices. Use the initial position setting as the point of reference, and then use the offset setting to move the Web Widget horizontally, vertically, or both from that position (in pixels).
For more information, see the developer documentation for the offset setting.
Customizing the color of the widget elements
You can specify an overall color scheme for the Web Widget (theme color) and a custom color for the text in the launcher, contact button, and header (theme text color) from the Web Widget administration page (see Configuring components in the Web Widget).
However, if you want to customize specific elements, you need to use the color setting. You can choose a unique color for each of these Web Widget components:
- Launcher
- Button
- Button text
- Results list
- Header
- Article links
For accessibility purposes, the Web Widget automatically adjusts colors using an algorithm to guarantee a minimum contrast ratio as specified by the WCAG guidelines.
For more information about customizing the color of Web Widget elements, see the developer documentation for the color setting.
Changing visible ordering in the widget
Suppressing widget features on specific pages
You can enable the Contact Form, Chat, Talk, and Help Center in the Web Widget and then use the suppress setting to change the features offered on particular pages of your site to suit your needs.
- Have Help Center deflection on some pages
- Have Chat or the Contact Form without deflection on other pages
- Offer tiered service levels to signed in and identified users
For more information, see the developer documentation for the suppress setting.
Customizing widget text
You can change the text of the Web Widget components in the table below, and you can also customize the Help Center search placeholder text.
Component | Details |
---|---|
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Object: launcher Setting: chatLabel Description: Text on the launcher button when Chat is enabled and Help Center is not onDefault text: Chat |
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Object: launcher Setting: label Description: Text on the launcher button Default text: Help, Support or Feedback (defined on the Web Widget Admin page) |
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Object: helpCenter Setting: title Description: The title of the Help Center page Default text: Help |
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Object: contactForm Setting: title Description: Title of the contact formDefault text: Leave us a message or Contact us (defined on the Web Widget Admin page) |
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Object: helpCenter Setting: messageButton Description: Text on the button in the Help Center form that loads the Contact form (~20 character limit) Default text: Leave us a message or Contact us (defined on the Web Widget Admin page) |
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Object: helpCenter Setting: chatButton Description: Text on the button shown in the Help Center form that loads the Chat (~20 character limit)Default text: Help, Support, or Feedback (defined on the Web Widget Admin page) |
You use the translations object to change some of the default text displayed in the Web Widget. Translations are grouped by feature—for example, Launcher, Help Center, and Contact Form.
You can explore a list of potential language codes in Language codes for Zendesk supported languages.
The locale translations are triggered by the end user's browser language. You can also force the widget to always appear in a specific language and override the end-user's browser language setting. For more information, see Displaying your widget in a different language.
Adding a subject line to the contact form
With the subject setting on the contactForm object, you can set the Web Widget to include a subject field in the default contact form.
The default contact form is designed to promote engagement and offer a streamlined user experience when completing the contact form. While the default contact form does not include a subject line, you may want to add one to enhance the support experience for some customers.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the subject setting on the contactForm object.
Hiding the "View Original Article" button
The View Original Article button bridges the article in the Web Widget and the article in the Help Center itself. You can hide this button by using the helpCenter object, and setting the originalArticleButton property to false.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the originalArticleButton setting for the helpCenter object.
Limiting search results
With the filter setting on the helpCenter object, you can limit the results of searches performed from the Web Widget to articles based on category, section, and labels. For more information, see the developer documentation for the filter setting.
Scroll down for some additional examples that are not included in the developer docs that illustrate some of the ways you can limit search results.
To limit search to a specific section:
<script type="text/JavaScript">
window.zESettings = {
webWidget: {
helpCenter: {
filter: {
section: '200154474-Announcements'
}
}
}
};
</script>
To limit search to a specific category:
<script type="text/JavaScript">
window.zESettings = {
webWidget: {
helpCenter: {
filter: {
category: '200053794-General'
}
}
}
};
</script>
To limit search to content in multiple categories:
<script type="text/JavaScript">
window.zESettings = {
webWidget: {
helpCenter: {
filter: {
category: '115000669485,201742209'
}
}
}
};
</script>
To limit search to content with a specific label:
<script type="text/JavaScript">
window.zESettings = {
webWidget: {
helpCenter: {
filter: {
label_names: 'orders'
}
}
}
};
</script>
To limit search to content in a specific category and with specific labels:
<script type="text/JavaScript">
window.zESettings = {
webWidget: {
helpCenter: {
filter: {
category: '200053794-General',
label_names: 'Label One,Label Two,Label Three'
}
}
}
};
</script>
Customizing the Help Center search placeholder text
The default placeholder text in the Help Center search box is How can we help? You can customize this text so that it matches the user’s language, or so that specific text appears in certain languages. For more information, see the developer documentation for the searchPlaceholder setting.

If Contextual Help is enabled, you can also configure the Web Widget to open to recommended articles, making it easier for your customers to self-serve. For more information, see the developer documentation for the setSuggestions command for the helpCenter object.
Advanced configuration of Talk in the Web Widget
You can create multiple configurations that define how Talk behaves in the Web Widget. With each configuration you can customize call routing and display options for Talk in the Web Widget, based on your needs and preferences.
-
The agent group that you want Web Widget callback requests to be routed to
-
The priority of Web Widget callback requests
-
Display Request a callback, Call us, or both of these options in the Web Widget
-
Display an estimated wait time in the Web Widget
If you have only created a single configuration of Talk in the Web Widget, this will automatically be the default configuration that displays in the Web Widget whenever Talk is available.
If you have created multiple configurations of Talk in the Web Widget, you can use the Talk nickname setting to target the desired configuration.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the talk object, the nickname setting, and Configuring Zendesk Talk settings for the Web Widget.
Advanced configuration of Chat in the Web Widget
If you are using the Web Widget integrated Chat experience, you can offer Zendesk Chat functions in the Web Widget so that visitors to your website can chat with agents, and send and receive files that might help with their problem. Agents can also send proactive messages to visitors, to see if they want or need any help.
For more information, see the developer documentation for the chat object.
For information about how the old Chat (Zopim) APIs map to the new Web Widget APIs, see Migrating from the Chat Widget syntax to the unified Web Widget syntax.
Offering end users multiple contact options
You can allow end users to choose a contact option. You may want to customize your website so that some pages allow end users to make a choice and others don’t. The exact behavior depends on whether Chat or Talk is configured for the Web Widget, and whether a chat agent is online. You can customize the default text of contact options, if needed.
Here's a list of the default text:
Contact option | Default text |
---|---|
Contact button | Contact us |
Chat label (with agent online) | Live chat |
Chat label (with agent offline | Chat is unavailable |
Contact form label | Leave us a message |
For more information, see the developer documentation for the contactOptions setting.
Offering contact options with Chat
If Chat is configured for the Web Widget, end users are automatically routed to a chat, if a chat agent is available. However, you can allow end users to choose between chatting with an agent or completing a contact form, even if a chat agent is available. If a chat agent is available when the user clicks the launcher, but the agent signs off before the chat begins, the end users may see a message indicating that the agent is not available.
It's a known issue that when end users choose to chat, they cannot use the back button to return to the other contact options. To do so, they need to completely end the chat or refresh the page.
Offering contact options with Talk
If Talk and other contact options are enabled in the Web Widget, and agents are online, contact options are automatically enabled.
Formatting code for multiple widget components
Items that are specific to the Contact Form, Help Center, and Zendesk Chat are nested under those headings (contactForm, helpCenter and chat) in the HTML of your site, while global items are included separately.
- The position of the Web Widget on the screen has been changed using the offset setting. Offset is a global item, which is why it has its own entry.
- Help Center search—doesn’t include the View Original Article button. The title “Search for help” for English-language users, and “Have your say” for all other languages.
- Chat is disabled.
- The contact form title is “Message us” in English and “Contact us” in other languages.
- The launcher button text is “Make a request” in English and “Get help” in other languages.
<script type="text/JavaScript">
window.zESettings = {
webWidget: {
offset: { horizontal: '400px', vertical: '400px' },
helpCenter: {
originalArticleButton: false,
title: {
'en-US': 'Search for help',
'*': 'Have your say'
}
},
chat: {
suppress: true
},
contactForm: {
title: {
'en-US': 'SMessage us',
'*': 'Contact us'
}
},
launcher: {
label: {
'en-US': 'Make a request',
'*': 'Get help'
}
}
}
};
</script>
240 Comments
This is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to share this with everyone Thomas!
It looks like it's pretty hard to change more than the offered changes in the widget.
We want to change the contact form button to make it link directly to the real contact form. The problem is that the widget is missing all the CSS and Javascript. One can theoretically use conditional fields but it looks very bad in the widget and also conditional fields do not work.
So linking to the real contact form would be best. Can this be done somehow?
Also the "go to the article" button on the top right side of an open article is not seen by many. Can it be changed?
Hello Sebastian,
This should be doable with enough custom code working via the Web Widget. I'll see if I can drum up some attention for you on getting some help with this but for now, here is an article that might help you get started in your endeavor.
Introduction - Web Widget
Best regards.
How can I change field labels in contact form, specifically 'How can we help you?' label? Here is similar question: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115000453427-Is-it-possible-to-amend-the-labels-for-the-Contact-Us-fields-in-the-Web-Widget-, but answer points to this article, which does not cover that.
Hey Aleksey,
Can you provide a screenshot of the field you'd like to change in the widget? Are you trying to change the search placeholder that mentions "How can we help you?" If so, you can use the documentation here: Web Widget searchPlaceholder
Let me know if that's not what you're looking for!
Any news about my question about how it would be possible to link the contact form button directly to the real big contact form?
Hello Brett,
I'm talking not about placeholders but about the labels (the ones located above the fields). Like here:
Hi Aleksey,
The field labels should be editable from the Ticket Fields menu.
Hope that helps.
Hello Jacob,
What do ticket fields have to do with web widget?
@Aleksey, if you'd like to change the How can we help you? text then you'll need to use the widget api which I've linked for you. I'm afraid there's no way to change this natively at this time.
@sebastian, I did some digging on my end but I was unable to find any information on linking the web widget to an external contact form. You'd most likely need to custom code your own widget to accomplish this.
Let me know if you have any other questions for me!
@Brett, the API you've linked is about changing an input placeholder (text inside the field), and I need to change a label (text above the field). Please check my comment above for the screenshot. If it still isn't clear enough, here is a great article to help differentiate between labels and placeholders: https://joshuawinn.com/ux-input-placeholders-are-not-labels/. Thanks.
Hey Aleksey,
Thanks for the clarification! I did some digging on my end but I wasn't able to find a way to change the label itself in the widget. The only alternative I could find would be to hide this description field and create your own custom ticket field with the preferred label you'd like to display in the widget.
We do have an article for disabling the subject/description fields here that may be useful as well: Disabling the subject and description fields on the new request form in Help Center
Let me know if there's anything else I can assist with.
What if we are using kotlin?instead of JavaScript ?
Is there any documentation on changing the Get in touch button that appears in answer bot? Feel like the name of that is quite vague.
Mario Felix I don't believe we have any restrictions when using Kotlin, however, we don't have any documentation available to provide as examples for you.
Alex Zlatkus I did some digging and it does not look like we have an object for the AnswerBot to customize the Get in touch button. You can find more information in our AnswerBot API documentation
Let me know if you have any other questions!
I ran into some problems with the customizations, leading to ill behaviour of the widget, when trying to offer language support with chat. What happens is that when widget is selected (clicked), it just decides to disappear from the page. I created a fresh theme and added the widget configured for chat only (widget settings on support side), to minimize any affects by customization. Then I added customizations to document head in Guide template, and the widget just dissappears when clicked.
Widget seems to accept the settings, but just does not behave correctly any more.
I would appriciate, if any has any information, how to avoid this (excluding dropping the language support :-)) or if anyone could review the settings below, if there is an obvious mistake in the way I have done these.
Thanks in advance!
Document_head.hbs (clip from inside the script-tags):
Error I see in browser console, when I click the widget looks like this:
As reply to my question above: Setting the concierge information was causing problems. The name parameter cannot be language supported, but breaks the widget, if tried. Use case to language support for the default name is reasonable, for example using some general name like "Company helpdesk" in different languages. This can be solved for example by setting a variable in javascript based on dynamic content before the settings, and offering that variable as concierge name in the settings then.
Hi ZD community,

Is it possible to customize the word where is in Launcher?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Yu-Cheng Li,
Sure, you can try to use our web widget configurator. https://widget.premiumplus.io
Is there a way to customize the title of a default field?
I want to change the title of the description field "How can we help you?" to something different.
Michael Fritsch, I had a similar question here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/229167008/comments/360003581074. After all the QA ping pong I had there seems to be no way of doing it: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/229167008/comments/360003673893.
Hi, is it possible to move the Web Widget's functionality into a custom UI/tab on our product's global navigation bar? The Web Widget is often covering information on the bottom-right corner so that our users cannot see such info. It's even worse if we switch to the bottom-left corner.
Ideally, we'd like to still see the Web Widget appear, but only when clicking on a tab in the global navigation bar. If not, is there a way to change the icon/size of the Web Widget?
Hi,
Would the widget send a automated confirmation email to a user who contacted us via the widget? (We've set it up so they are required to provide their email address.)
Thanks
Henry
Hi,
Will we ever be able to customize the chat/contact us button shape form round to square, widget shape, fonts etc ind order to make the chat feel more integrated and aligned with the given brand identity?
Best,
Sebastian
Hi Sebastian Juul Jensen,
Thanks for sharing your feedback. I answered your question in this thread but wanted to respond here as well. We're considering how we can bring some additional launcher & widget customisations to our Admin settings to offer more flexibility so your feedback is timely and appreciated. Whilst I can't make any promises, I've logged your feedback & contact details. I'll definitely reach out with any news.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Senior Product Manager, Web Widget
Hi Henry Ho,
Yes, there is a default trigger setup (Business rules > Triggers) to send an auto-reply on ticket creation (a ticket is created when a user submits the Web Widget contact form). You can adjust the conditions & actions to suit your needs.
Hope this helps!
- Miranda.
Senior Product Manager, Web Widget
Hi Michael Fritsch, Aleksey Kislov,
Apologies for the delay here. You're right. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to change the 'How can we help you?' label within the contact form of the Web Widget. If you have Professional with add-on or Enterprise, then you can create a custom ticket form with the fields of your choice and display that form within the widget instead. More info here.
I'll definitely log your feedback and contact details. There's no immediate plans to introduce this but will reach out if there's news.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Senior Product Manager, Web Widget
Hi Brian,
Apologies for the short delay here. You can use our API to hide the Web Widget on page load and then use
show
to display it when the global navigation bar has been clicked. You can also place the widget in a specific location of the page using using zESettings, https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/widget/settings#settings-reference.Show: https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/widget/core#show
Hide: https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/widget/core#hide
There's also a great quick start guide on how to build your own launcher here if you'd like to go completely custom.
Hope that helps!
- Miranda.
Senior Product Manager, Web Widget
Is it possible to configure the web widget to open the Guide article in a new tab from the suggested articles list when a search is completed with the widget?
We have found that some of the styling set by the CSS within the article is not rendering within the widget e.g. "Note" or "Important" call outs we have created and the best experience is via the guide article itself.
This also helps us get more traffic onto our Help Centre.
Hi Adrian Siebert,
Unfortunately, it isn't possible to open articles directly in the Help Center from Web Widget search results. You do need to view the article within the widget first before a link to Help Center appears (in the top-right corner). Thanks for suggesting this! I'll log it as a feature request and record your details. We'll reach out if there's any news.
Miranda.
Senior Product Manager, Web Widget
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