WhatsApp Product Messaging

Overview

Businesses have two options to share products when having conversation with their consumers:

• Single Product Messaging
• Multi Product Messaging

Single Product Message

Messages with a single product item from the business's inventory. When the consumer clicks on "View", the product will be displayed in a Product Detail Page (PDP) format. 

WhatsApp Product Messaging - single

Multi Product Messaging

Messages containing a selection of up to 30 items from a business's inventory. Products are displayed in an items list and for each product from the list consumers can access a Product Detail Page (PDP) format.

WhatsApp Product Messaging - multi

Consumers that receive Multi and Single Product Messages are able to perform four main actions:

1. View products: Consumers can see a list of products or just one product. Whenever a user clicks on a specific item, the user will be presented with 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.
2. Ask about product specific details: Within a Product Detail Page (PDP), Consumers have an option to ask specific details about the product they are interested in.
3. Add products to a cart: Consumers can add a product to their cart, or amend quantities directly from the list or on the product detail page. Whenever a user adds a product to the shopping cart, the item’s latest info is fetched. If there has been a state change on any of the items, the following dialog will be displayed “One or more items in your cart have been updated”. A cart persists in a chat thread between the business and the consumer until the cart is sent to the business.
4. Send a shopping cart to the business: After adding all needed items, consumers 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 (currently there are no payment integrations available within WhatsApp).

If a consumer 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. 

Shopping cart experience

After viewing products, a consumer 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 consumer and business and carts do not persist across multiple devices. Once a cart is sent, the consumer 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.

Consumers 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. Consumers can send a new cart if they need new items or would like to change their order. Businesses cannot send carts to consumers.

Key benefits

Both Multi and Single Product Messages lend themselves best to user experiences, where it’s a better to guide the consumer to a subset of items most relevant to their request, rather than browsing a business’ full inventory.

Simple & efficient

Combining the features with List Messages and Reply Buttons to get to what the consumer is looking for fast.

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

Product messages are part of interactive messages that 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.

Use cases

Multi Product Messages are best for guiding consumers to a specific subset of a business’ inventory, such as:

• Shopping in a conversational way. For example, using search functionality to allow consumers to type a shopping list and send back a Multi-Product Message in response.
• Navigating to a specific category. For example, fitness apparel. (“I would like to get fit!”)
• Re-ordering previously ordered items. For example, a user can re-order their regular take-out order of less than 30 items. (“I want to order the same shrimps pad-tai I ordered yesterday!”) 

Single Product Messages are best for guiding consumers to one specific item from a business’ inventory, offering quick responses from a limited set of options, such as:

• Responding to a consumer's specific request (“Hey, do you have a white chair?”).
• Providing a recommendation (“Got a lego for my 3y old son?”).
• Reordering a previous item (“Can I get the same SIM bundle I ordered last month?”).

Expected behaviour for messages

Multi-Product Messages and Single Product Messages can be:

• Forwarded by one user to another. The consumer may want to get a second opinion about their potential purchase, and can quickly share the product message with one (or more) of their WhatsApp contacts for feedback.
• Reopened by the user within the same conversation. 

Multi-Product Messages and Single Product Messages cannot be:

• Sent as proactive messages (notifications). They can only be sent as part of existing conversations.

Prerequisite

Brands need to have a Facebook product catalog in order to use WhatsApp Product Messaging.

Limitations

Multi-product message doesn't support sending more than 30 products.

Currently, these types of messages can be received on 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. 

Configuration steps

To enable WhatsApp Product Messaging, please contact your account team.