There’s no doubt about the fact that ever since social media platforms have become the go-to choice for communicating, sharing, and connecting socially, it has empowered businesses to grow their brand awareness and nourish their relationship with their customers in a significant manner.
Although most of these platforms started off with the aim to help people connect with each other across the globe. Over time these channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp became an essential part of the marketing plans of businesses of all sizes to help them grow and promote their brands and online digital showroom, i.e. ecommerce websites.
With around 2 billion active users, Whatsapp Messenger or Whatsapp is one of the most popular mediums for sending text messages and sharing images, videos, documents, locations, and other shareable content. As the platform found immense popularity, it led to the launch of Whatsapp Business, a separate app with the sole aim of helping brands and businesses grow with special features and services to make customer communication better. And now there are millions of businesses using WhatsApp Business accounts on an everyday basis.
In this blog, we have put together all the information you need to create and use your Whatsapp Business Account and how it can benefit merchants starting their online business.
What is WhatsApp Business?
Whatsapp Business is a free-to-use app available on iOS and Android devices that allows you to sell, communicate and promote your products and services with your customers on a much more personal level. With business tools like catalogues, quick replies, away messages, and the ability to add labels, Whatsapp Business helps merchants and brands in quicker resolution of queries, sales, promotions, and much more.
How to create a Whatsapp Business Account?
- Download Whatsapp Business App
Install WhatsApp Business App from the Apple store or Android store on your operating devices.
- Register your mobile number
- To Register, Click on Agree to Terms and Conditions
- Enter your Phone Number. Choose the number you want to register with. You can either use your personal number or register with another number. It is more advisable to use another number as it becomes easier to differentiate customers.
- Tap on Next & Verify your number.
- An OTP will be sent via SMS to your registered mobile number upon verification.
- Tap on Continue to move forward and allow it to sync in your contacts and media files.
- Create Business Profile
- Set your profile picture that defines your brand perfectly.
- Enter your business name.
- Select a category for your business.
- Click on ‘Show more options for additional details like description, address, and importantly, your Digital Showroom website URL which will help you direct your customers to your website
- Add popular products
- Click on the three dots at the top right-hand corner.
- Click on Business Tools.
- Click on Catalog.
- Click on ‘Add Item’ to add some of the most popular products that are in demand, along with the Digital Showroom website product link. Doing so makes the process much more convenient for the consumers to directly place the order and eventually, generate more traffic and increase the conversion rate.
- Click on ‘Add Images’ & go to Gallery for choosing images. We recommend adding more than 1 image for each product.
- Select the image you want to set up for your products
Once you’ve added the images, move forward by adding your item name, price, description, country of origin, etc. Click on “More fields” to add some more details about the item. On tapping this, you will see a column to add your Digital showroom website product link and item code. Once added, enter ‘Save’.
Hurray! You’ve successfully created your business account on Whatsapp. But, how will your contacts discover your online store?
Here’s what you need to do
Once you’re done setting up your profile, send a warm greeting message to your Whatsapp contacts to let them know about the launch of your online store. To make this process more seamless, Digital Showroom by DotPe provides a marketing feature through which you can share your website link with your customers on WhatsApp along with an auto-generated message that will eventually save time & will look more professional.
Here are a few benefits that WhatsApp Business Application provides:
This is what your WhatsApp Business Profile will look like.
- Business Profile
With its business profile feature, you can set up a professional and appealing storefront by adding a profile picture, a brief description of your business, address, working hours, etc. Moreover, it allows you to add the URL of your Digital Showroom website and other social media handles to make your profile more inviting and customer friendly.
These Catalogs are easy to share & increase the visibility of your products even in another location.
- Catalogs
By creating a catalog, you can showcase & share your products and services with your customers more efficiently. This catalog will be displayed on your business profile section and anyone viewing your profile can check out your products and buy. You can update your catalog by adding necessary details like description, multiple product images, and the product URL from your DIgital Showroom website.
Further to make the catalog updation process easy for your digital showroom website, you can access the catalog builder tool which lets you add hundreds of products within minutes.
A sample of an auto-generated reply sent to a customer in less than a minute.
- Messaging Tools
When you respond to your customers quickly, you are guaranteed to make a positive impact on the brand perception by your potential customers. These are some of the Whatsapp Business tools you should use to respond to your customers instantly:
- Greeting Message – A standard greeting message that can be sent to the customers whenever they initiate a conversation with you or after 14 days of no activity at their end.
- Away Message – To instantly respond to a customer’s message while you are not available at that particular time.
- Quick replies – A set of ready answers that can be used for answering commonly asked questions by customers. You can even add shortcuts for the FAQs, which can be sent just by typing ”/” in the chat box and selecting from the ones used recently.
- Whatsapp Labels – A feature that lets you organise different types of customers under unique labels like ‘New customer’, ‘Repeat customer’, etc. for efficient communication with them.
Are you someone who has just started off with your small business?
Well, then it is the right time to create a Whatsapp business account as it is a proven tool that has helped millions of small businesses promote their products & services. Similarly, we at Digital Showroom by DotPe, have created a platform to support businesses of all sizes looking to establish themselves in the ecommerce space. Digital Showroom provides free online store maker tools which help you build a professional website through a few simple steps within minutes.
Digital Showroom also offers you other important features like pan India deliveries to over 27000+ serviceable pin codes, instant payment options, a free trial of premium themes, and an easy-to-use marketing suite to help you manage all aspects of your online business from a centralised dashboard.
We would be delighted to be of any assistance, do feel free to reach out to us at care@dotpe.in.