In today’s digital age, Marketing has become dynamic i.e.360 °. You can do it via WhatsApp platform. WhatsApp has a ‘global reach’. The WhatsApp platform ranges from Marketing and promotion to the actual sales of things followed by a payment facility. You can sell your product/service on WhatsApp Shop today. WhatsApp sales is a current trend.  

With over 100 countries using WhatsApp with more than 2 billion users, selling on WhatsApp Shop is the most lucrative and smart WhatsApp marketing strategy for businesses across the world.   

In this blog article, we will offer a comprehensive guide on how to sell on WhatsApp.  

What is A WhatsApp Shop? 

WhatsApp has come up with a WhatsApp Shop facility to encourage businesses to sell on the messaging platform. This simply allows the business to create a product catalog on WhatsApp Business with product/service details, including prices, an add-to-cart functionality, and a way to accept payments for the orders booked via active integrations using a WhatsApp Business API solution.   

What is the necessity to build the WhatsApp Shop?  

The need to use WhatsApp shop has reasons. It comes with genuine benefits. Some below interesting facts highlight the importance of using WhatsApp shop for online selling for businesses. Let us throw some flashlights on them here:  

  • An average person consumes around 18.6 hours per month on WhatsApp. 

  • A total of 50 million businesses uses WhatsApp Business app. 

  • WhatsApp Business app has an open rate of 99%. 

  • Businesses receive replies to more than 40% of the messages from the customers who received those messages (maybe of promotions, offers, discounts, alerts, etc.) 

  • Every day nearly about 100 billion messages are shared on WhatsApp. 

The Key Benefits of Setting Up A WhatsApp Shop 

WhatsApp selling has below key benefits 

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1. Enhance customer lifecycle conversion rate  

Utilizing WhatsApp to communicate with your customers enhances the sales cycle by permitting you to use a single platform for acquiring, engaging, and converting leads.  

WhatsApp allows increased personalization, making customer interactions effective, fast, and highly accessible. In short, the entire sales cycle from lead generation to a sale becomes easy and 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 major issue almost all online retail businesses face. This can be due to other distractions or indecisions on the customers’ part or due to competitors with more attractive offers taking off the customers.   

Based on statistics, the average cart abandonment rate is around 70%, making it one of the most critical hurdles for any business.  

WhatsApp Shop is an excellent opportunity for businesses to remove high cart abandonment rates. With an interesting offer message or setting up a cart abandonment reminder on WhatsApp, you can contact customers and gently push them to return and make the purchase.  

3. Create and leverage upselling and cross-selling opportunities  

Upselling and cross-selling on WhatsApp get higher when customers have positive experiences with that business in the past and present. This way, WhatsApp Shop is the best platform for gaining trust by offering excellent purchase experiences and utilizing 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 actively engage with your customers, sharing information about offers, discounts, and personalized purchase recommendations you have available. This forms a remarkably efficient distribution channel for your business.  

4. Develop and improve customer loyalty  

WhatsApp makes for more personal and meaningful customer communication, supporting organic growth in your customer relationship.   

Hence, WhatsApp Shops can be the ideal medium to develop and build a loyal customer base that can benefit your business in the long term. By promptly tending to your customers, you turn loyal patrons attracted to make regular purchases and transform them into voices for your brand.   

5. Provide fast and reliable support  

WhatsApp is an easy and reliable platform for customer support and issue resolution.   

Customers can bring out queries or raise an issue through the chat window. Your team can also quickly resolve the problem as they can refer to important customer history instantly.  

WhatsApp Shops can offer highly personalized and reliable issue resolution, which means more satisfaction to the customers and more lucrative sales.  

4 Steps to Build a WhatsApp Shop  

Ready to get started on developing a self-sufficient sales channel for your business? Refer to these essential steps to follow for selling on WhatsApp:   

Step 1: Download WhatsApp Business and make a business profile  

The first step to creating a WhatsApp Shop is to download the WhatsApp Business app. WhatsApp Business app is different from the WhatsApp Messenger app. It has its business-specific tools and functionalities.  

The WhatsApp Business app can be downloaded from the App Store or the Plays Store, depending on which device you are using.   

Once this is complete, you can make your unique business profile by following these steps:   

  • Open the WhatsApp Business app > Go to Menu > Settings > Company Settings >  

  • Choose the edit option from the Profile section. 

  • Edit or add information like business name, profile picture, business description, email, business website, business contact number, etc. 

  • Click save and exit. 

Your WhatsApp Business profile is ready now, which can be verified for better brand credibility. Verified business accounts will show a green verified badge displayed 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 WebMaxy comes into the picture. WebMaxy offers a good range of facilities in this.  

Step 2: Set up timings and craft welcome messages   

After setting up your WhatsApp Business profile, focus on more details vital to your business, like:  

  • The opening time of your business, i.e., the fixed service hours when customers may 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 share with customers on first contact. This helps to develop your brand persona and gives a positive impression. 

  • Quick answer templates for handling customer queries that are commonly received. 

Step 3: Apply WhatsApp automation   

Among the several advantages of employing a WhatsApp Shop is the ability to upgrade/modify and streamline workflows with a WhatsApp Business API solution like WebMaxy. Utilizing WhatsApp automation to answer and address all the queries.  

Activating or implementing WhatsApp automation to sell on WhatsApp Shop parallelly takes a big load off your customer service team.   

WhatsApp automation makes the entire process easy. This process includes complete guiding to the customer for the whole shopping experience and answering automated answers for generic queries. They can also cover tasks like providing menus, sending info and product images to request, guiding customers to product pages to receive more orders, or joining customers in live chats with various agents for query resolution.  

Step 4: Configure and implement rules  

The next vital step to build an efficient, high performing workflow for your WhatsApp Shop is to set up or implement rules for it.  

Your team, which normally gets highly attentive towards customer tasks and queries with more time commitment, will be free to do other important tasks due to the perfect planning of automated tasks depending upon priorities and time savings.  

Automated tasks can be streamlined with rules. These tasks such as sending customer satisfaction surveys, allocating queries to team members with round-robin logic, labeling conversations as spam, and other familiar actions. This way, your WhatsApp Shop can be made to run in a more seamless and well-structured manner, leading to raised customer engagement.  

List of Tips and Tricks for Effective WhatsApp Sales 

To gain mastery in WhatsApp selling, please find below the list of tips and tricks to implement for the best results:  

Here are some tips, tricks, and hacks to help you master selling on WhatsApp:  

  • Create Your Product Catalogue on WhatsApp 

  • Start Selling to Your Known Contacts 

  • Use WhatsApp Status Updates 

  • Join WhatsApp Seller Groups 

  • Capitalize Your Social Media Accounts 

  • Add a WhatsApp Chat Widget to Your Website 

  • Leveraging Psychological Triggers in Content 

  • Capitalize CTWA (Click to WhatsApp) 

  • Run WhatsApp-Based Contests and Giveaways 

  • Use Chat Automation to Automatically Qualify and Route Leads 

  • Manage and Automate Repeat Customer Enquiries 

  • Create Template Messages for Quick Replies 

  • Send Automated Confirmations and Updates 

  • Develop a WhatsApp Broadcast List/Groups 

  • Reach out to More People with Bulk WhatsApp Broadcasts 

  • Send Messages with a Personal Touch 

  • Leverage Multimedia Content 

  • Lower down Work with Automated Marketing Campaigns 

  • Enhance Sales with Direct Conversations 

  • Use Labels to Organize Your Chats 

  • Create a Messaging Schedule 

  • Use Link Shorteners with Tracking 

  • Do follow Up with Leads and Customers 

 

Use of Analytics to Improve Your WhatsApp Sales Strategy  

In the above sections, we have seen how to use WhatsApp for business. Now analyzing the performance of your WhatsApp sales efforts is essential for regular improvement. Follow the below tips for using analytics to optimize your strategy:  

  • Track key metrics: Analyze important data points such as message open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. 

  • Analyze customer behavior: Assess patterns in customer interactions to identify improvement areas and opportunities to upsell or cross-sell. 

  • Change or divert your strategy based on data: Use insights from your analytics to refine your messaging, content, and targeting, ensuring that you’re always making data-driven decisions. 

 

Conclusion  

WhatsApp is the most suitable channel that is gaining popularity among businesses. Still, there is an untapped eCommerce potential in WhatsApp Shop, to convert and enhance sales in a more efficient and highly personalized manner.  

Combined with a good WhatsApp Business API solution provider like WebMaxy, you can unlock the vast potential of WhatsApp shop, improving personalization, utilizing smart automation, and offering smooth payment processes.  

Are you looking to boost your sales with WhatsApp Shop? Then contact the WebMaxy WhatsApp commerce team to guide you for the setup and support. Our team is dedicated and committed to your successful business journey with our WhatsApp Automation services.  

To reap the WhatsApp business benefits via our services and support, you can email us on: info@webmaxy.co. 

Curious to know benefits from WhatsApp Business API? 

Hire WebMaxy as your WhatsApp Business service provider 

 

Frequently Asked Questions 

How do I accept payments on WhatsApp Shop? 

One of the significant advantages of having a WhatsApp Shop is its ability to cater as a platform for all stages of the sales funnel, including smooth transactions up to the payment stage. With a WhatsApp Business API provider like WebMaxy, you can integrate with payment gateways like RazorPay and PayU, activating a smooth and complete checkout experience on your WhatsApp Shop. 

 

What is the cost of setting up a WhatsApp shop? 

Installing a WhatsApp shop is free. But, with WhatsApp Business API, you can avail yourself of features of WhatsApp automation like sending automated messages, building catalogs, and setting up cart abandonment reminder messages  

 

How to receive orders on WhatsApp shop? 

Get orders on your WhatsApp shop by listing products/services, enabling the ‘shopping’ feature, engaging customers, and facilitating smooth transactions via direct messages or the integrated shopping cart  

 

How to add the 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 online WhatsApp shop  

 

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