When and where to use triggers

A good trigger fires when someone has shown they are investing attention—they opened pricing, scrolled through a long feature list, or stayed on a page long enough that silent questions are piling up. A weak trigger fires because the page loaded.

Ask for each URL: “What is the most valuable question I could answer for someone who is here, right now?” If you cannot name that question, delay the trigger or skip the page.

These paths usually deserve explicit rules before generic site-wide defaults:

• Pricing and plans— comparison friction, annual vs monthly math, and “which plan fits my team size?”
• Product or feature deep-dives — technical buyers validating fit before they book a call.
• Security, compliance, and legal — procurement checks that stall deals when unanswered.
• Integration or API docs — implementation risk is top of mind; short, specific offers to help reduce that risk work well.
• Case studies and industry pages — visitors are pattern-matching; a trigger can invite them to relate their scenario to a similar customer story.

For broad top-of-funnel pages, prefer longer delays or scroll-based triggers so you only speak after someone has actually consumed the headline and primary proof.

Time delayis your “have they oriented?” guardrail. Very short delays on blog posts often feel noisy; on pricing, a modest delay can still feel natural if the message is tightly tied to plan choice.

Scroll depthis your “have they engaged with substance?” signal. Pair it on long pages so you do not interrupt someone who is still reading the hero. A visitor who reaches seventy percent of a security whitepaper is in a different state than one who bounced at the hero.

Once per session is often the right default when you are experimenting. Repeated proactive opens on every navigation train visitors to ignore the widget entirely.

Mobile visitors have less screen space and higher distraction. Evaluate do not open on mobile when your first message is long, when the page already has a primary CTA competing for taps, or when your funnel shows mobile users prefer self-serve browsing before chat. Conversely, keep mobile triggers when your product solves an urgent, location-specific job (support, bookings, logistics) where chat removes friction.

Standard triggers give you a baseline without micromanagement. Layer page-specific rules where intent spikes or where your analytics show repeated drop-off. You do not need a rule for every URL—only for places where a timely sentence changes the outcome.

When you add a new major page (a launch, a new plan tier, a partner integration), add or adjust a rule in the same release cycle. Triggers are part of go-to-market, not an afterthought.