Instagram Persistent Menu and Suggested Questions

Most DM conversations open with something vague: "hi", "available?", "price?". Then a round trip is needed to work out what the person actually wants, and in that gap some of them leave. The problem is not disinterest. It is that the person does not know what they are allowed to ask you.

Instagram has two tools for exactly this, and both are underused: suggested questions and the persistent menu. Each one shows the way before the visitor types anything. This guide covers where they appear, what the limits are, and what to put in them.

Suggested questions: only before the first message

Suggested questions — known as ice breakers in the documentation — are buttons shown above the message box when someone opens your conversation for the first time. Instead of composing something, they tap one.

• You can define between 1 and 4 questions.
• Each is capped at 80 characters — one short sentence, not a paragraph.
• Behind each you can queue up to 10 prepared messages, sent in order.
• They appear only before the first message. Once a conversation starts, they are gone.

That last limit is the important one and the one most often missed: suggested questions are a *starting* tool, not an always-available one. If you want something reachable at any point, it belongs in the persistent menu.

The persistent menu: always there

The persistent menu is a short list of buttons that stays available at the bottom of the conversation throughout — whether it is the first message or the hundredth.

• You can define between 1 and 5 buttons.
• It is always visible, unlike suggested questions.
• Right for actions someone might need at any moment in a conversation.

The practical difference: suggested questions offer a starting point to someone who does not know what to ask. The persistent menu gives a route to someone who needs something mid-conversation.

If an option only makes sense at the very beginning, it is a suggested question. If it could be needed at any time, it is a menu item.

What to write in suggested questions

The first temptation is to write something generic: "More information", "Help". These achieve nothing, because they carry exactly the vagueness you were trying to remove. A suggested question should be the sentence already in the visitor’s head.

• For a shop: "What is the price and is it in stock?" — "How long is delivery?" — "I need the size chart"
• For a clinic: "Do you have appointments free?" — "What does a consultation cost?" — "Where are you located?"
• For a course: "When does the next intake start?" — "Can I see the syllabus?" — "What are the payment terms?"

A simple way to find the right ones: read the last three months of DMs and count which three questions repeat most. It is almost always those — and almost never the ones you would guess from memory.

What belongs in the persistent menu

Because it is always visible, the menu is for standing actions rather than situational questions:

• Browse products or services
• Place an order or request an appointment
• Track an order
• Talk to a real person

Take that last one seriously. Every automated system needs an exit. Somebody who wants a human and cannot find one has a worse experience than somebody who never met the automation at all.

Combined with auto-replies, where it actually pays

On their own, these two tools only *suggest*. The value appears when something answers behind them. The full path looks like this:

1. Someone opens the conversation and sees the suggested questions.
2. They tap "What is the price and is it in stock?".
3. An auto-reply sends the price list or a swipeable product showcase.
4. If needed, a form inside that same conversation collects their number and order.

None of those steps needs you. More importantly, the person never left the DM — no link opened, no browser form filled in. Every step that takes someone out of the conversation loses a share of them.

How to write the prepared replies

The buttons are only half the job; the other half is the text sent behind them. The commonest mistake here is writing something suited to email rather than to a DM.

• Keep it short. DMs are read on a phone, and a long paragraph is skipped.
• One message, one subject. If you have three things to say, three consecutive messages beat one three-part block.
• End with a question. A message ending in a full stop ends the conversation.
• Write in the language your audience writes in.

A simple test: read the prepared reply on your own phone. If you had to scroll, it is too long.

The full path, from post to order

Suggested questions and the persistent menu are one piece of a longer path. With every piece in place it looks like this:

1. A post goes out with "comment PRICE" in the caption.
2. Someone comments. A comment auto-reply posts a public answer and moves the conversation to the DM.
3. They open the conversation for the first time and see the suggested questions.
4. They tap one and get the prepared reply.
5. If they want to buy, an in-DM form collects their number and order details.
6. That number is saved to the lead list and can be exported later.

At no point did the visitor leave Instagram, and at no point were you holding the phone. That is the difference between automation as an answering machine and automation as a sales path.

Real examples by business type

Online shop

Suggested questions: "price and stock", "delivery cost and time", "size chart". Persistent menu: "browse products", "track my order", "talk to support". The stock answer earns the most, because it is the question that sends someone to the next page when it goes unanswered.

Clinic

Suggested questions: "appointments available", "consultation cost", "address and hours". Persistent menu: "request an appointment", "talk to reception". The in-DM form saves the most time here, because appointment details arrive structured.

Coach or consultant

Suggested questions: "when does the next intake start", "syllabus", "payment terms". Persistent menu: "request a consultation", "talk to support". Because the decision is slower here, prepared replies should inform rather than merely encourage.

Agency or team

If you manage several pages, each has its own settings. The thing to avoid is copying one page’s configuration onto another blindly; the repeated questions differ per business.

Language and tone

A note that matters locally: many audiences are more comfortable with a conversational register, but prepared replies that are too casual read as unprofessional. The usual balance is a conversational suggested question with a plainer, slightly more formal answer.

If you also have an international audience, remember these settings have one version — not one per language. Choose the language the majority of your audience writes in.

How often to review

Setting it once and walking away is the commonest reason these tools stop working. A simple rhythm:

• Monthly: read the last month of DMs and find the new repeated question.
• Whenever prices or terms change: update the prepared replies the same day.
• Quarterly: review the persistent menu and delete anything nobody taps.

A prepared reply carrying last season’s price is worse than no prepared reply, because people believe it.

Frequently asked

Does this need my Instagram password?

No. These settings are applied through Instagram’s official connection, and no tool needs your password to do it. If one asks, stop there.

Why can I not see the suggested questions?

The likeliest reason is that you are testing from an account that has messaged you before — they only appear ahead of the first message. The second is that the settings have not propagated yet.

Do these work on a personal account?

No. Instagram’s messaging features are available to professional accounts (business or creator). If yours is personal, convert it first.

What should happen outside working hours

Most of the value these tools create arrives at night and at weekends — exactly when nobody is there to answer. But there is a common mistake: replying automatically as though a person were holding the phone.

Honesty about time works better. A reply saying "we are outside working hours; we answer from 10am tomorrow — but if your question is price, here it is" both sets the expectation correctly and does something useful.

• Write different rules for different time windows — auto-replies can behave differently by hour.
• In an out-of-hours reply, always do something useful; "we will answer tomorrow" alone is deflating.
• If you have a form, night is its best moment: details are collected and ready to follow up in the morning.

When a reply is conditional on following

Some pages prefer that certain content — a file, a discount code — reaches only people who follow them. That is possible, but it needs care.

• Make the exchange explicit: say what is given for what.
• After the follow, the content must arrive immediately. Delay ruins the whole exchange.
• Do not do this for every question. Someone asking a price should not be made to follow first.

A simple rule: gating extra content is reasonable, gating basic information like price or opening hours is not. The second only makes people leave.

What not to automate

Good automation knows when to step aside. A few situations where an automatic reply does damage:

• Complaints. Someone unhappy who receives a canned reply becomes twice as unhappy.
• Medical, legal or financial questions needing a precise answer.
• Negotiating price or special terms.
• Anything your prepared replies did not anticipate — an irrelevant answer is worse than silence.

A persistent menu with a "talk to support" option is the escape hatch that takes these situations out of automation’s hands.

How to tell whether it worked

The effect cannot be reduced to a single number, but there are practical signals:

• The ratio of conversations opening with a specific question versus opening with "hi". If the second falls, the suggested questions are working.
• How many exchanges it takes to reach the actual subject. The goal is one.
• How many leads complete in the same conversation rather than being abandoned half-finished.

If none of those move after two weeks, the problem is usually the questions themselves: you have probably offered something your audience does not ask.

Mistakes that spoil the experience

• Writing generic prompts like "More information" that resolve none of the ambiguity.
• Making all four questions about one topic — anyone with a different need has no option at all.
• Leaving no "talk to support" route in the menu.
• Long replies. A three-paragraph answer does not get read in a DM.
• Setting it once and forgetting. Prices change; prepared answers have to change with them.

How to check it is set up correctly

The simplest test: open your conversation from another account that has never messaged you. If the suggested questions do not appear, either the settings have not propagated yet or that account has messaged you before.

One technical detail that confuses people: these settings live on your page’s messaging profile, not on individual conversations. Changes therefore affect new conversations and can take a little time to appear everywhere.

Where to start

It does not need to be complete on day one. Start with the smallest version that works: three suggested questions taken from your page’s three genuinely most repeated questions, and a two-item persistent menu — one for products, one for talking to a person. Two weeks later, read the DMs again and see which question still repeats. That becomes the fourth.