How to turn your WhatsApp Business into a sales expert

WhatsApp commerce has fueled the growth of several small and major businesses. The WhatsApp chatbot has grown into a full-fledged channel that marketers use to sell and transact with their clients, establishing itself as the most effective digital channel for buying and selling.

WhatsApp commerce is meant to provide your consumers with a more personalized and enjoyable purchase experience on WhatsApp.

Let’s understand how your brand can power an end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp and become part of this WhatsApp Commerce Revolution. 

Driving discovery and Opt-in

WhatsApp requires a brand to get an Opt-in from a user before it can start engaging with them, i.e., the user needs to consent to start a conversation with your business. 

There are various ways you can do it; 

●  Through SMS, if you already have access to the customer’s phone number 

●  On your website, by having a banner or providing a QR code on main landing pages 

●  With telephony, give them a missed call option or add a “move conversation to WhatsApp” option to your IVR menu

●  Social media channels leveraging both organic and paid mediums

●  Traditional advertising like OOH, PR/Media, etc

You can use any communication channel to get customer opt-ins depending upon varied factors like your customer demography, the call to action you want to use, etc. 

Redefining Customer Engagement with marketing notifications

People want to hear from their favorite brands in more ways across the customer journey. Companies can now send more proactive notifications to people who opt-in to receive them. They will now be able to send updates such as:

● Product recommendations related to a customer’s previous purchases

● Helpful informational alerts and reminders

● Relevant offers

● Newsletters

WhatsApp’s newly launched UI elements for a personalized shopping experience.

As the e-Commerce industry continues to roar, there has been steady growth in the Conversational Commerce landscape in India. WhatsApp chatbot has become an integral part of every brand’s digital transformation strategy. Let’s look at WhatsApp’s newly launched UI elements set to revolutionize shopping. 

Multi-product messages

Multi-product messages contain a selection of up to 30 items from a business’ inventory. Allow your users to shop conversationally Reordering. Multi-product messages let your user navigate to a specific category. You can also send personalized offers and recommendations to re-order their regular take-out order of fewer than 30 items.

Single-product messages

Single product messages are messages with a single product item from the business’ inventory. The product is displayed in a Product Detail Page (PDP) format.

Single Product Messages are best for guiding customers to one specific item from a business’ inventory. 

You can also offer quick responses from a limited set of options, such as:

● Responding to a customer’s specific request

● Providing a recommendation

● Reordering a previous item

Shopping Cart Experience

After viewing products, a customer can add them to their shopping cart and send that cart to a business. For commerce on WhatsApp, a shopping cart is unique to a person/business chat thread in a specific device and has no expiration date. 

Customers can add up to 99 units of each catalog item to a shopping cart, but there is no limit on the number of different items added to a cart.     

List Messages & Quick Reply Buttons

List Messages presents a choice of up to 10 alternatives for users to pick from in a menu-type view. This makes it easier for people to choose from a list of alternatives.

Customers can now select an option from a list of quick reply buttons rather than type back complete answers from a list of alternatives. This feature makes the entire conversation journey significantly faster. 

Payment on WhatsApp

Digital payments’ seamless experience has boosted the adoption of cashless transactions.  Right from retail outlets in malls to local Kirana shops, the UPI code scanner sits comfortably at the cash counter of every shop. Customers’ expectations and demands have risen significantly as they have become acclimated to digital payments. This is where our WhatsApp’s 3-click payment experience comes in handy. Customers can now make direct payments from their WhatsApp accounts while shopping. What’s the best part? Customers do not need to switch between various apps. Notifications can also be used as payment reminders, ensuring a smooth payment collection procedure.

Wrapping up

WhatsApp commerce has the potential to be the biggest game-changer in India’s eCommerce story! Customers don’t have to sift through many apps and websites to find what they want. When it comes to generating revenue and unlocking hyper exponential growth, WhatsApp will become the most important revenue channel.

Haptik is honored to be the first BSP to introduce these new JioMart functionalities. JioMart is driving the following use cases using WhatsApp commerce:

1. Driving conversations with non-transactional messages

2. Sending personalized product recommendations based on customer’s needs & past behavior

3. Driving orders through interactive messages and a seamless Shopping Cart experience

*by Aakrit Vaish, Co Founder and Ceo, Jio Haptik.