Today, marketing can be done anywhere and on any channel. But WhatsApp cannot be clubbed as just another channel for marketing.
It’s a platform that gives a venue for making actual sales besides its boundless scope in marketing, with unique features like WhatsApp Shop.
With over 100 countries using WhatsApp, selling on WhatsApp Shop is a viable and promising strategy for businesses across the globe.
In this article, we will provide a complete guide to WhatsApp Shop.
What is a WhatsApp Shop?
WhatsApp Shop is a solution built by WhatsApp to enable businesses to sell on the messaging platform. This includes allowing the business to set up product catalogs on WhatsApp Business with details, including prices, an add-to-cart functionality, and a way to accept payments for the orders placed via intelligent integrations using a WhatsApp Business API solution.
Why build a WhatsApp Shop?
A shop on WhatsApp comes with its own set of benefits, owing to the popularity of WhatsApp as a channel and the functions it brings to your online store. These statistics are, by itself, convincing proof of the potential a WhatsApp Shop can tap into:
• An average person spends around 18.6 hours per month on WhatsApp
• WhatsApp Business app is used by a total of 50 million businesses
• WhatsApp Business app has an open rate of 99%
• Businesses receive replies to more than 40% of the messages that are sent to customers on WhatsApp
• Every day around 100 billion messages are shared on WhatsApp
Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of setting up a WhatsApp Shop:
1. Boost customer lifecycle conversion rate
Utilizing WhatsApp to communicate with your customers boosts the sales cycle by allowing you to employ a single platform for acquiring, engaging, and converting leads.
WhatsApp enables increased personalization, making customer interactions effective, quick, and highly accessible. In short, the entire journey from lead generation to a sale becomes seamlessly smooth.
Besides the crucial product information, customers can receive timely alerts on purchases, delivery ETAs and order status alerts on WhatsApp.
Additionally, by improving the quality of customer interactions by carrying out sales on WhatsApp Shop, online businesses can significantly reduce negative feedback that could otherwise hinder the brand’s reputation and damage its online credibility.
2. Reduce cart abandonment rate
Shopping cart abandonment can be a significant issue most online retail businesses face. This can be forgetfulness or indecisiveness on the customers’ part or due to competitors swaying off the customers.
Based on statistics, the average cart abandonment rate is around 70%, making it one of the most critical roadblocks for any business.
WhatsApp Shop is an excellent opportunity for businesses to curb high cart abandonment rates. With a delightful offer message or setting up a cart abandonment reminder on WhatsApp, you can reach out to customers and gently nudge them to return and make the purchase.
3. Create and leverage upselling and cross-selling opportunities
Upselling and cross-selling on WhatsApp increases when customers have had positive experiences with that business. This way, WhatsApp Shop is a great platform for gaining trust by offering excellent purchase experiences and utilizing upselling and cross-selling strategies.
By cross-selling, you can promote and showcase more of your products/services to your existing customers.
Through the chat functionality of WhatsApp, you can actively engage with your customers, sharing information about deals, discounts, and personalized recommendations you have available. This establishes a remarkably efficient distribution channel for your business.
4. Build and improve customer loyalty
WhatsApp makes for more personal and meaningful customer communication, contributing to the organic growth in your customer relationship.
Hence, WhatsApp Shops can be the ideal medium to cultivate and build a loyal customer base that can benefit your business in the long term. By attentively tending to your customers, you cultivate loyal patrons inclined to make frequent purchases and transform them into advocates for your brand.
5. Provide fast and reliable support
There is no denying that WhatsApp is a very convenient and reliable platform for customer support and issue resolution.
Customers can raise issues or bring forth queries directly from the chat window. Your team can 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.
4 Quick steps to build a WhatsApp Shop
Ready to get started towards building a self-sufficient sales channel for your business? Here are the steps you need to follow:
Step 1: Download Whatsapp Business and create a business profile
The first step to create WhatsApp Shop is to download the WhatsApp Business app. WhatsApp Business app is different 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, depending on what device you have. Once 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.
• Click 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.
Additionally, gaining access to WhatsApp API enables 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 Interakt comes into play.
Step 2: Set up timings and create welcome messages
After setting up your WhatsApp Business profile, focus on more details crucial to your business, like:
• The open time of your business, i.e., the fixed hours when customers can message you on WhatsApp. This allows 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 open hours.
• Welcome messages to share with customers on first contact. This helps to establish your brand persona and create a positive impression.
• Quick answer templates for handling customer queries that are commonly received.
Step 3: Deploy WhatsApp automations
Among the several advantages of employing a WhatsApp Shop is the capability to enhance and streamline workflows with a WhatsApp Business API solution like Interakt. Leveraging WhatsApp automations to act as a store clerk to answer queries facilitates precisely that.
Enabling WhatsApp automations to sell on WhatsApp Shop simultaneously takes a huge load off of your customer service team. WhatsApp automations simplify the whole process of guiding customers through the shopping experience while providing automated answers to common queries.
They can also perform tasks like offering menus, sending info and product images upon request, directing customers to product pages to get more orders or even connecting customers with queries to live agents when required.
Step 4: Set up rules
The next important step to building 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 significant amount of attention and time. By setting rules you can prioritize tasks better and automate certain tasks based on WhatsApp customer conversation triggers.
Rules can be applied to automate tasks such as dispatching customer satisfaction surveys, assigning queries to team members using round-robin logic, labeling conversations as spam, and other similar actions. This way, your WhatsApp Shop can be made to run in a more streamlined and better-organized fashion, leading to higher customer engagement.
How do I accept payments on WhatsApp Shop?
One of the significant advantages of having a WhatsApp Shop is its capability to serve as a platform for all stages of the sales funnel, including seamless transactions up to the payment stage. With a WhatsApp Business API provider like Interakt, you can integrate with payment gateways like RazorPay and PayU, enabling a seamless and complete checkout experience on your WhatsApp Shop.
Conclusion
WhatsApp is a great channel that is gaining popularity among businesses. Yet there is an untapped eCommerce potential in WhatsApp Shop, to convert and boost sales in a more efficient and highly personalized manner.
Paired with a good WhatsApp Business API solution provider like Interakt, you can unlock the vast potential of WhatsApp shop, improving personalization, leveraging clever automation and providing seamless payment processes.
Looking to boost sales with WhatsApp Shop?
FAQs
Setting up a WhatsApp shop is free. However with WhatsApp Business API you can leverage features of WhatsApp automation like sending automated messages, building catalogs and setting up cart abandonment reminders
Yes, a WhatsApp Business Account is required to create a WhatsApp Shop, offering business features crucial for selling products and communicating with customers effectively.
Receive orders on your WhatsApp shop by listing products/services, enabling the ‘shopping’ feature, engaging customers, and facilitating seamless transactions via direct messages or the integrated shopping cart.
To add “Shop Now” on WhatsApp, create a catalog in WhatsApp Business, then share it via chat or status, allowing customers to browse and buy directly from your shop.
