With over 2 billion active users, WhatsApp is the number one messaging app in the world with India being its largest market. The instant messaging platform introduced WhatsApp for Business in 2018 and more recently, it officially launched WhatsApp Payments in India. After these two updates, the next logical step was introducing shopping on WhatsApp.
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WhatsApp has now introduced Carts, an interactive way for users to shop on the app. WhatsApp Carts is designed for businesses that have a catalogue of multiple products. The new features will make it easier for a buyer to select multiple products and send the order as one message, and for businesses to manage order inquiries. Let’s take a look at how WhatsApp Carts work.
How to shop on WhatsApp with Carts: step-by-step guide
WhatsApp introduces Carts for shopping on the app
Using WhatsApp Carts to place orders with businesses is pretty straight forward. WhatsApp already offers Catalogs on the WhatsApp Business app for businesses to organise and showcase their products. WhatsApp Carts is an extension of Catalogs, adding an option to add products to your ‘cart’ and place an order with the seller.
Below are the steps to place an order using WhatsApp Carts:
- Open WhatsApp on your phone
- Go to the chat of the business profile from where you want to order
- Tap on the shopping button next to the business name on top
- Browse through the catalogue
- Tap on the product you like
- Tap either ‘add to cart’ or ‘Message business’ if you have any query related to the product
- Click on the ‘View Cart’ button to see all products you added, here you can also change the quantity
- If you want to add more products, click on ‘Add more’
- Once you’re done adding products, send the cart to the seller as a WhatsApp message
- You will be able to see the ‘View cart’ button in the chat with the seller
WhatsApp will let you edit the message before sending the cart to the seller. This way users will be able to enquire about all or some products in the cart from the seller in a single message.
The order will be placed only after the seller confirms it. While WhatsApp has not revealed the payment options yet, we can safely assume WhatsApp Payments to be an option as well.