What is a Text card?
Text cards are the most used cards in the bot builder. Their purpose is to deliver content in a text format and given that we're building conversational experiences most of the experience is text.
The text card can be added by clicking on the "T" icon in the top left part of the screen.
Once it's been added, you can now add text content. Keep in mind that this is a conversation and it's important to be short concise as you would when texting a friend. Long paragraphs of text are not recommended therefore we have set a limit of 400 characters per text card. If you can keep it shorted, even better!
There are work arounds like using another text card below. If there's no way around it and you must add a lot of text, we recommend using delay cards in between text cards. For more information on delay cards and how they work, click here.
Once you've entered your text, you might want to add a call-to-action for your conversations to guide a user to a particular goal. These buttons can be created by clicking on "+ Add Button".
A pop-up will appear where you can configure the button.
- Create a button name. This is what the user will see when the text card appears. Make it short and actionable (ie: Learn More, Schedule Now, View Services).
- Link the button to a destination. This is to send the user to the correct destination. Here you have a few options - send to another block, open a URL, click to call or send to a form.
- Block: This is when you want the user to proceed in chat to another content block with more information. For example, they might want to know what services you provide. When they click on the "Locations" button, they will go to a block where you might have a text card with information about your Toronto locations. You might have called this block "Toronto".
- URL: This call-to-action will simply open the URL you added. We recommend you use UTM tracking parameters to keep track of traffic coming from your chatbot.
- Phone #: This button will open a click-to-call notification on the user's phone or desktop which will trigger a phone call.
- Form: This one is very similar to Block except it's to send the user to a form to collect some information about them.
Once the button is created, it will appear like this:
At any time, you can edit or delete the button using the pencil and trash icons. You can also delete the whole card by clicking on the trash icon at the very top of the card.
Advanced Features (We like to call it our "Secret Menu" 😉)
There is one cool feature that combines two functionalities: text cards and attributes.
You can insert attributes in text cards in order to personalize the experience. For example, if you enter ${attribute_given_name}, when a user sees the card, it will show the value set for that attribute. If we have collected that attribute, it will show "John". If the attribute wasn't set, it will not show. You can set the attributes names however you like. Please view attributes article.