In the current time, WhatsApp has explored a lot in many areas other than its basic messaging feature. WhatsApp commerce has been a game-changer in the arena of online business i.e. e-commerce. WhatsApp is available as another channel for marketing.
Now, you can sell your product or service as a business on the WhatsApp platform by opening a WhatsApp store, offering your products and services with description and pricing.
In this Article, we are highlighting the insights of WhatsApp store. Let us start with knowing what WhatsApp Store is.
What is WhatsApp Store?
WhatsApp Store is a solution developed by WhatsApp to allow businesses to sell their products and services on the messaging platform. This involves allowing the business to set up WhatsApp catalogue on WhatsApp Business with details, including prices, an add-to-cart function, and a way to accept payments for the orders placed via smart integrations using a WhatsApp Business API solution.
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Why You Need a WhatsApp Store?
It’s a million dollars question for businesses planning to or having online businesses and going for WhatsApp commerce, must have a WhatsApp store. These are convincing proofs showing the potential of WhatsApp store.
The genuine reasons for the same are as per given below:
- An average person hangs around 18.6 hours per month on WhatsApp.
- A total of 50 million businesses are using WhatsApp business app.
- Open Rate of WhatsApp business app is 99%.
- Rate of customer’s reply messages is 40% for WhatsApp.
- Every day almost 100 billion messages are shared on WhatsApp.
Key Benefits of WhatsApp Store
Let’s refer here the key benefits of setting up a WhatsApp Shop:
- Enhance customer lifecycle conversion rate
Leveraging WhatsApp to communicate with your customers boosts the sales cycle by permitting you to employ a single platform for acquiring, engaging, and converting leads.
WhatsApp allows increased personalization, making strong, prompt and easily accessible customer interactions. That means, the complete journey from lead generation to a sale becomes seamlessly smooth.
Customers can receive timely alerts on purchases, delivery ETAs and alerts about order status on WhatsApp apart from vital product information.
Also, by refining the customer interactions quality, by doing sales on WhatsApp Shop, online businesses can strongly reduce negative feedback. It could otherwise hamper the brand’s reputation and spoil its online credibility.
- Reduce cart abandonment rate
Shopping cart abandonment can be a main issue most online retail businesses face. This can be due to forgetfulness or indecisiveness on the customers’ side or due to competitors swaying off the customers.
As per the statistics, the average cart abandonment rate is around 70%, making it one of the most critical bottlenecks for any business.
WhatsApp Shop is an excellent opportunity for businesses to restrain high cart abandonment rates. With a wonderful offer message or setting up a cart abandonment reminder on WhatsApp, you can again reach out to customers and gently nudge them to return and complete the purchase.
- Build and improve customer loyalty
WhatsApp creates more personal and meaningful customer communication, creating organic growth in your customer relationship.
So, WhatsApp Shops can be a suitable medium to prepare and build a loyal customer base that can benefit your business in the long run. By carefully looking after your customers, you can develop devoted followers who are more likely to buy often and become promoters of your company.
- Create and utilize upselling and cross-selling opportunities
Upselling and cross selling on WhatsApp increases when customers have comfortable and positive experiences with that business. This way, WhatsApp Shop is a great platform for creating trust by providing excellent purchase experiences and using upselling and cross-selling strategies.
By cross-selling, you can promote and display more of your products/services to your existing customers.
Through the chat functionality of WhatsApp, you can mostly engage with your customers, sharing information about deals, discounts, offers and personalized recommendations you have available. This sets up a very efficient distribution channel for your business.
- Offer fast and trustful support
It is true that WhatsApp is a very comfortable and reliable platform for customer support and query resolution.
Customers can tell issues or bring forth queries directly from the chat window. Your team may also quickly assess the problem as they can access important customer history instantly.
WhatsApp Shops can provide highly personalized and reliable issue resolution, which means more satisfied customers and more potential sales.
Build Your WhatsApp Store in Just 4 Steps
Are you ready to build your business’s WhatsApp store for growth?
Here are the steps you need to follow:
Step 1: Download WhatsApp Business and create a business profile
The first step to create WhatsApp eCommerce Store is to download the WhatsApp Business app. WhatsApp Business app differs from the WhatsApp messenger app, with its business-specific tools and functionalities.
The WhatsApp Business app can be downloaded from the App Store or the Plays Store, on the device you have. After this is done, you can create your unique business profile by following these steps:
- Open the WhatsApp Business app > Go to Menu > Settings > Company Settings >
- Select the ‘edit’ option from the Profile section.
- Edit/ add information like business name, profile picture, business description, email, business website, business contact number etc.
- Tap on save and exit.
You now have a WhatsApp Business profile, which can be verified for better brand credibility. Verified business accounts will display a green verified badge at the end of the business name.
Also, gaining access to WhatsApp API allows collaboration among multiple users, allowing them to collectively respond to your WhatsApp Business messages on a unified platform accessible across various devices. This is where signing up on a platform like comes into play.
Step 2: Set up timings and create welcome messages
After streamlining your WhatsApp Business profile, focus on more details vital to your business, like:
- The opening time of your business, i.e., the fixed working hours when customers can message you on WhatsApp. This permits customers to know when it is best to reach out to you.
- A message of absence to send to customers when they reach out to you outside of your opening hours.
- Welcome messages to send to customers on first contact. This helps to set up your brand persona and create a positive impression.
- Quick answer templates for handling commonly received customer queries.
Step 3: Implement WhatsApp automations
Out of the several advantages of having a WhatsApp Shop is the capability to enhance and simplify workflows with a WhatsApp Business API solution like WebMaxy WhatsApp Commerce.
Allowing WhatsApp automation to sell on WhatsApp Shop equally takes a huge burden off your customer service team. WhatsApp automations simplify the whole process of guiding customers through the shopping experience while offering automated answers to generic queries.
They can also perform tasks like offering menus, sending info and product images upon request, guiding customers to product pages to get more orders or even connecting customers with live agents for resolving their queries whenever required.
Step 4: Set up rules
The next important step to build a highly performing workflow for your WhatsApp Shop is to set up rules for it.
Your team will have to perform a diverse set of tasks, and these require a remarkable amount of attention and time. By setting rules you can prioritize tasks better and automate some tasks based on WhatsApp customer conversation triggers.
Rules can be applied to task automation like dispatching customer satisfaction surveys, assigning queries to team members using round-robin logic, labeling conversations as spam, and other identical actions.
This way, your WhatsApp Shop can be made to run in a more simplified and better-organized fashion, leading to higher customer engagement.
Payment Mode on your WhatsApp Shop
One of the remarkable advantages of having a WhatsApp Shop is its capability to serve as a platform for the entire sales funnel, including smooth transactions up to the payment stage.
With a WhatsApp Business API provider like WebMaxy WhatsApp Commerce you can integrate with payment gateways like Razor Pay and PayU, allowing a smooth and complete checkout experience on your WhatsApp Shop.
End Summary
WhatsApp is an exciting channel that is obtaining popularity among businesses. Still, there is an untapped eCommerce potential in WhatsApp Shop, to convert and improve sales in a more efficient and highly personalized manner.
Joining with a good WhatsApp Business API solution provider like WebMaxy WhatsApp Commerce, a Wati Alternative, you can unlock the whole potential of WhatsApp store, improving personalization, leveraging smart automation and providing seamless payment processes.
WebMaxy WhatsApp Commerce team is dedicated to serving customers 24/7. For more clarifications and queries, kindly mail us at: info@webmaxy.co. We are delighted to guide and support.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Do I really need a WhatsApp Business Account to create a WhatsApp Store?
Yes, a WhatsApp Business Account is needed to create a WhatsApp Store, offering business features important for selling products, services and communicating with customers effectively.
How to receive orders on WhatsApp store?
To receive orders on your WhatsApp store by listing products/services, you need to activate the ‘shopping’ feature, engaging customers, and facilitating smooth transactions via direct messages or the integrated shopping cart.
How to add shop now button on WhatsApp?
To add “Shop Now” on WhatsApp, create a catalog in WhatsApp Business, then share it via chat or status, permitting customers to browse and buy directly from your shop.
Is setting up WhatsApp store free?
Yes, setting up a WhatsApp store is entirely free. WhatsApp has introduced a range of business tools to support small businesses on its WhatsApp Business App which are features like a WhatsApp business profile, WhatsApp product catalog etc.
What is the cost of setting up WhatsApp shop?
Setting up a WhatsApp shop is free of cost. However, with WhatsApp Business API you can utilize features of WhatsApp automation like sending automated messages, building product catalogs and setting up cart abandonment reminders.
