Businesses using the WhatsApp Business API can showcase and share their products and services with customers for them to browse items and add to a cart without leaving the chat.
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Businesses have two options to share products when chatting with their customers:
Multi-Product Messages: Messages containing a selection of up to 30 items from a business's inventory.
Single-Product Messages: Messages with one product item from the business's inventory. The product is displayed in a Product Detail Page (PDP) format.
Both Multi-Product Messages and Single-Product Messages are types of interactive messages.
Multi-Product message example:
Single-Product message example:
Menu triggered when user clicks on Start Shopping:
Product Detail Page example:
Users that receive Multi- and Single-Product Messages can perform 3 main actions:
View products: Customers can see a list of products or just one product. Whenever a user clicks on a specific item, we fetch the product's latest info and display the product in a Product Detail Page (PDP) format. Currently, PDPs only support product images — any videos and/or GIFs added to the product won’t be displayed in the PDP.
Add products to a cart: Whenever a user adds a product to the shopping cart, we fetch the item’s latest info. If there has been a state change on any of the items, we display a dialog saying “One or more items in your cart have been updated” — See for more information. A cart persists in a chat thread between business and customer until the cart is sent to the business — See for details.
Send a shopping cart to the business: After adding all needed items, customers can send their cart to the business they’re messaging with. After that, businesses can define the next steps, such as requesting delivery info or giving payment options.
If a customer has multiple devices linked to the same WhatsApp account, the Multi-Product and Single-Product Messages will be synced between devices. However, the shopping cart is local to each specific device. See for details.
Currently, these types of messages can be received in the following platforms:
iOS: 2.21.100 (Multi-Product Messages) and 2.21.210 (Single-Product Messages).
Android: 2.21.9.15 (Multi-Product Messages) and 2.21.19 (Single-Product Messages).
Web: The web client that supports these features has been launched.
If the recipient's app version does not support Multi or Single-Product Messages, they will instead receive a message explaining that they were unable to receive a message because they are using an outdated version of WhatsApp. The business will also receive a webhook notification indicating the message was unable to be delivered due to the recipient using an outdated version of WhatsApp.
Multi-Product Messages and Single-Product Messages can be:
Forwarded by one user to another.
Reopened by a user within the same conversation.
Multi-Product Messages and Single-Product Messages cannot be:
Sent as notifications. They can only be sent as part of existing conversations.
Unlike product messages sent via the WhatsApp Business app, messages sent via the Cloud API currently do not display a shopping cart icon in the chat thread header.
After viewing products, a customer can add them to their shopping cart and send that cart to a business. For the purposes of commerce on WhatsApp, a shopping cart:
Is unique to a person/business chat thread in a specific device: Only one cart is created per chat thread between customer and business and carts do not persist across multiple devices. Once a cart is sent, the customer can open another cart with the business and start the process again.
Has no expiration date: The cart persists in the chat thread until it is sent to the business. Once sent, the cart is cleared.
Customers can add up to 99 units of each single catalog item to a shopping cart, but there is no limit on the number of distinct items that can be added to a cart.
Once a cart has been sent, no edits can be made. Customers can send a new cart if they need new items, or would like to change their order. Businesses cannot send carts to customers.
Both Multi and Single-Product Messages lend themselves best to user experiences that are simple and personalized, where it's a better experience to guide the customer to a subset of items most relevant to them, rather than browsing a business's full inventory.
Simple and Efficient
Combining the features with navigation tools like NLP, text search or List Messages and Reply Buttons to get to what the customer is looking for fast.
Personal
Populated dynamically so can be personalized to the customer or situation. For example, you can show a Multi-Product Message of a customer’s most frequently ordered items.
Business Outcomes
A performant channel for driving orders, during testing businesses had an average 7% conversion of Multi-Product Messages sent to carts received.
No Templates
Interactive messages do not require templates or pre-approvals. They are generated in real-time and will always reflect the latest item details, pricing and stock levels from your inventory.
Multi-Product Messages are best for guiding customers to a specific subset of a business’ inventory, such as:
Shopping in a conversational way. For example, using search functionality to allow customers to type a shopping list and send back a Multi-Product Message in response.
Navigating to a specific category. For example, fitness apparel.
Personalized offers or recommendations.
Re-ordering previously ordered items. For example, a user can re-order their regular take-out order of less than 30 items.
Single-Product Messages are best for guiding customers to one specific item from a business’ inventory, offering quick responses from a limited set of options, such as:
Responding to a customer’s specific request.
Providing a recommendation.
Reordering a previous item.
Both features can also be used as part of a human agent flow, however you need to build the tooling to allow the human agent to generate a Multi-Product Message or Single-Product Message in thread.
To use WhatsApp Commerce in MyAlice, follow these steps:
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