WhatsApp commerce has crept up on many and if you’re not already using it then it’s time to do so. WhatsApp Catalogs were introduced which businesses can keep updated from their computers to include what’s in stock. Alongside them, Facebook launched carts on WhatsApp last year, since then they have been to make more than 5 million orders.
You might not yet be considering WhatsApp as a selling venue, but buyer communications has always been key for closing online orders and Whatsapp are making it simple to answer a query and collect an order in a single message.
During the Q1 Facebook Earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg shared some exciting updates about their WhatsApp’s business, including news around business messaging, WhatsApp commerce and Facebook ads that click to WhatsApp:
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Business Messaging
For a lot of people around the world, online commerce is about messaging. People want to get help and even make purchases right from a chat. Small businesses want to be able to show products and take orders via message, and larger businesses want reliable and secure infrastructure to communicate with customers. As we’ve shared before, every day more than 175M people message a WhatsApp Business account. And today we’re announcing that businesses using our WhatsApp Business API are sending more than 100M messages on WhatsApp per day.
Commerce on WhatsApp
We introduced carts on WhatsApp during the holiday shopping season last year so people could browse a catalog, select multiple products and send the order as one message to the business. In just a few months, this feature is proving extremely popular with people who want to place an order using WhatsApp. In fact, since we introduced carts, people have used them to send orders more than 5 million times, which is helping businesses increase sales and grow.
Ads that Click to WhatsApp
We often hear from small businesses around the world how Facebook and Instagram are their storefront to get discovered and WhatsApp is their store counter to discuss products, answer questions and close sales. With more and more people and businesses connecting digitally during the pandemic, it’s really important that we offer online tools to help them reach new customers and grow their businesses. While the focus at WhatsApp is on business messaging, we know how valuable ads can be to small businesses. That’s why in the last couple years we began offering businesses the ability to create ads on Facebook and Instagram that include a WhatsApp button so people can easily start a WhatsApp chat to ask questions with just one tap. These ads have proved extremely popular for small businesses all over the world and we’re announcing that there are now nearly 1M advertisers globally using them.
Easier Ad Creation
And in the future, we want to make it even simpler to create these ads. So starting soon we’ll add some options to the WhatsApp Business app so businesses that want to create a Facebook ad can get started right from an item in their catalog. These options will allow businesses to start the ad creation process directly from an individual product or service they offer and then take them to Facebook where they can create and publish the ad. We think this will prove really valuable as businesses look to get discovered, reach new customers and grow their businesses.”
– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
