Setting Up your WhatsApp Shopping Portal

In the current time, small businesses need to use all the available sales and marketing avenues to ensure success in the market. One of the fastest growing platforms that businesses can choose is WhatsApp. The messaging platform has rolled out several features that can aid the e-commerce and retail capabilities of its business users. Therefore, businesses need to look at WhatsApp as something more than a messaging platform. By using the platform, retailers can easily capture customer attention and enhance their shopping experience to increase their loyalty.

As mentioned earlier, we can see that WhatsApp has looked to make online shopping easier by adding many features for its business users. Features like Catalogs and WhatsApp Pay are excellent addition for small business owners who are looking for a compact yet comprehensive shopping tool. It is clear that WhatsApp is fast-becoming an indispensable shopping partner because of its ability to act as a store counter and enable coordinated sales capabilities for business owners. In this article, we will look at the various shopping features offered by the WhatsApp Business app and look at how it enhances shopping experiences.

Catalog Feature:

WhatsApp’s catalog feature allows retailers and other small business owners to showcase their products online. Catalogs are digital storefronts where businesses can feature their products’ photos, prices and description. Since catalogs are displayed in the chat screen, customers will be able to see their desired products without switching screens. Generally, business owners send website links and product lists to the customers with the hope of increasing their sales. With catalogs, they will be able to close a sale in the chat screen.

Carts:

WhatsApp’s newest shopping feature allows customers to buy their desired products conveniently. With the new feature, customers can browse their favorite products through catalogs and immediately purchase them. With the cart feature, businesses will be able to sell products from the first customer interaction. Moreover, carts also allows businesses to easily keep track of customer journeys as they keep note of customer enquiries, orders and customer requests.

Are you facing Cart Abandonment problem? Then here's a guide on How WhatsApp can reduce abandoned cart rates?  

Payments:

WhatsApp Business also allows businesses to conduct transactions in the app. This helps customers purchase their favorite products without changing screens. With WhatsApp payments, business owners will be able to easily generate and share receipts/invoices to the customers. The instant payment option will enhance customer satisfaction as customers will be able to buy products instantly.

Many market sectors are transforming to render completely digital service during this pandemic. With the help of catalog, cart and payments, business owners can render a completely digital shopping service to their customers. By using these features, business owners will be able to increase their revenue. However, they also need to focus on providing excellent customer experiences. The following pointers will act as a guide for the same.

Creating Emotional Connections:

In today’s highly competitive digital marketplace, customers want personalized services. Therefore, business owners need to forge emotional connections with their customers and understand their pulse. With WhatsApp, businesses can connect with their customers on a deeper level and use the knowledge to render excellent customer experiences.

Use Right Channels:

Today’s customers do not like to wait and want businesses to render fast and convenient customer service. To ensure the same, businesses need to use service channels that are preferred by most of the customers. This is possible with WhatsApp, which is used by over a billion users.

Learn more: "How WhatsApp is used for Customer Service Channel?"

Reward Loyalty:

Customer loyalty is important for a business’ success. Therefore, businesses need to track and reward loyalty to enhance customer satisfaction. With WhatsApp, businesses will be able to track customer journeys easily and identify loyal customers. This will help them create a good loyalty program.

Create Self-Help:

WhatsApp is one of the perfect platforms for creating self-help FAQs and guides that help customers with their queries. Some features in the app, like Automatic Replies, Quizzes, Lists, etc., allows businesses to instantly help customers with their product/service-related queries. By creating self-help options, businesses will be able to rapidly improve the shopping experience of their customers.

With its range of features, WhatsApp Business is growing into a superior shopping app. It is clear to see that the app has a strong future, and will be a great help to emerging businesses across all market sectors. We strongly urge small and medium business owners to adopt WhatsApp into their service strategy and greatly increase their shopping experience. This will help them gain a competitive edge over others in the market.

Further Reading:

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