ChatCatch – Guided Chat Enquiries & Lead Capture

ChatCatch is a friendly, guided enquiry widget for service businesses. Instead of a plain "message us" button that sends a blank chat, ChatCatch walks the visitor through a short, mobile-first flow — what they need, where, and when — then hands the completed enquiry off to WhatsApp with the details already written out. Every enquiry is also saved on your site and emailed to you, so no lead is ever lost.

• Guided, not blank. A short multi-step chat produces a complete enquiry, not "Hi, I'm interested."
• Never miss a lead. Each enquiry is saved to your site and emailed — even if the visitor doesn't finish in WhatsApp.
• No setup headaches. It uses a normal WhatsApp click-to-chat link — no Meta Business API, no approval, no coding.

The floating chat widget, the inline guided Wizard (shortcode + block), one-click industry templates, and server-side lead capture are all included. ChatCatch is an independent plugin and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by WhatsApp or Meta.

1.0.0

• First public release on WordPress.org.

0.5.0

• New Appearance controls on the Chat widget tab: choose the floating button's text and icon, a chat header title, the button/header colour, and the accent colour used across the chat and Wizard.
• Colours apply live to the widget and the inline Wizard, so the whole experience matches your brand.
• Refreshed chat layout: a two-line header (business name + title) and full-width stacked choice buttons.

0.4.0

• New industry templates: on the Wizard tab, pick your trade (plumbing, electrical, AC & HVAC, cleaning, salon, auto, and more) and click Apply to fill the service menu in one click — then tweak it and save.
• Ten ready-made service menus, including nested sub-services, so the Wizard is usable in seconds.

0.3.0

• New inline guided Wizard: place a configurable category → service → sub-service menu in any page or post with the [chatcatch_wizard] shortcode or the ChatCatch Wizard block (no page builder or code required).
• The Wizard hands off to WhatsApp and saves the lead through the exact same path as the floating widget, so an enquiry reads identically whichever one the visitor uses.
• Edit the service menu as a simple indented list on the new Wizard settings tab.
• Shared front-end core so the WhatsApp message stays in one place; block ships with no build step.

0.2.0

• Lead capture: every enquiry is now saved to your site and (optionally) emailed to you, so no lead is lost even if the visitor never taps send.
• New Leads inbox to browse, view, reply-on-WhatsApp, export to CSV, and clear saved enquiries, with automatic age-based retention.
• Public capture endpoint hardened with a honeypot, per-IP rate limits, a body-size cap, a bot filter and strict server-side validation; the message and recipient are recomputed on the server.
• Privacy-first storage: enquiry answers, the message, the deep link and the source page only — no IP or device identifiers stored.

0.1.0

• Foundation release: plugin framework, module system, typed settings layer, the General settings tab, and the floating guided chat widget with WhatsApp handoff.