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WhatsApp Business. Catalogs, Communication and Commerce

WhatsApp introduced Catalogs in single device platforms in 2021 and has now planned to release the same over the WhatsApp Business API.

Let’s explore how you as an enterprise can capitalize on this.

Building Catalogs

Catalogs for WhatsApp Business API users can be built in multiple ways. We are listing them below, in an order of ease of execution.

  1. If your business already has a Facebook catalog set up, we suggest that you leverage that catalog for WhatsApp commerce use cases, as it’s the quickest way to commence operations
  2. If your business already has and manages its own Facebook catalog, you can give permission to your Vendor to connect your catalog. Once the permissions are granted, your vendor can link the WhatsApp Business Account to the Catalog via the WhatsApp Manager.
  3. If your business is building this for the first time and want to explore all possibilities, your business can also create this in the Facebook Commerce Manager.
  4. If your business has an elaborate eCommerce engine and you want all the flexibility of managing the items displayed from your eCommerce system, you need to get down to integrating your eCommerce platform with the WhatsApp Business API.

Sharing Catalogs with WhatsApp Users

I will skip the details on how to manage a single product catalog and focus on the multi-product catalog, as that’s how business will best leverage the platform. Catalogs can be categorized, and products can be placed in categories, to make the user search easier.

The above is a quick short, proposed flow for a grocery store, which you can replicate for your business. The in-picture guidelines, detail the characteristics of how this can be executed.

A caveat – in the current release, your catalog can only have 30 items and that limitation is driven by the current menu structure of the WhatsApp Business API, which has this limitation. That, however, does not mean you cannot show more products. Innovate, as you go. Or talk to us

Shopping Cart and Checkout

A customer can simply add products to his shopping cart, decide quantity, sub-category (weight, size, color with impact on price) and then proceed to checkout. The checkout process will be fed to your eCommerce / ERP using our platform.

A caveat – in the current release, the shopping cart is not fungible across multiple devices that your customer may be using. Not a very strong use case, but nevertheless, something for your call center agents, who get fervent calls saying that my shopping cart is missing.

Converse, Collect and Complete

Continue the user engagement to collect further collect information on shipping address, shipping location map, confirm delivery date and time, collect money (in countries with WhatsApp pay, you can pay using the WhatsApp pay. However, nothing stops you from sending a payment link for the customer to pay), send notification of dispatch and successful delivery completion.

All this comes together on the Mehery Smart messaging platform, which will give you the integration engagement with the people who understand how this will come together. Contact us at sales@mehery.com to get us involved in your success.