Beyond personal conversations, WhatsApp has now become a powerful platform for eCommerce brands. WhatsApp eCommerce is emerging as an effective platform for conducting business communications & commerce (buying & selling products or services).
As businesses are continually striving for innovative ways to connect with their customers, WhatsApp Commerce works the best.
This blog underlines how WhatsApp eCommerce helps to supercharge your eCommerce business in 2024
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WhatsApp eCommerce: Inspiring Statistics
eCommerce businesses can take a quick glance at some of the interesting statistics mentioned below. These WhatsApp related stats and facts will surely make a difference to get there!
1. According to the Mobile Economy 2022 report, smartphone adoption will rise worldwide from 75% in 2021 to 84% in 2025.
2. WhatsApp is the most popular global messaging app as of January 2023.
3. The following table shows the essential data about the WhatsApp use;
| Global monthly active users | Monthly active users vs. total population | Monthly active users vs. population aged 13+ | Female users vs. total population | Male users vs. total population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 bn | 25.3% | 32.4% | 45.8% | 54.2% |
4. In some countries including Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico the active time spent on WhatsApp is more than 20 hours per month and worldwide it is 18.6 hours.
5. The reason for users to contact on WhatsApp business:
| Track delivery | Appointments and notifications | Special deals | Customer service | Other updates like cancellations or delays |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 54% | 50% | 43% | 39% | 23% |
Now, before exploring the potential and strategies of WhatsApp eCommerce, let’s discuss some of the major challenges for eCommerce businesses.
Major challenges faced by eCommerce businesses:
- Scalability: For growing your e-commerce brand, reaching a wider audience and amplifying conversions is the big challenge.
- Abandoned cart: Many eCommerce brands are facing this issue because customers are not successfully checking out the store. Abandoned cart rate accounts for around 80% and eCommerce businesses are looking for ways to overcome the same.
- Payment security: The security of customer’s payment information is a big concern for many e-commerce brands. Data breaches can lead to loss of customer trust and legal consequences and hence there must be payment security.
- Customer acquisition and generating re-orders: Attracting new customers to your online store is difficult as they have so many options available. Generating product re-orders or getting repeat customers is also one of the major challenges these days that the eCommerce businesses are facing.
- Unaccepted COD orders: Customers order online with the option of COD but they refuse to pay and even cancel their order which results in additional shipping charges.
All these challenges make it difficult for eCommerce business owners to thrive in the market. However, WhatsApp eCommerce aligned with WhatsApp automation and WhatsApp marketing tools seems to have potential in overcoming these problems.
Overview about the potential of WhatsApp eCommerce:
- Talk to the customers directly: As WhatsApp is a conversational app, it allows you to chat directly with the people who are interested in shopping with you. Your customers experience a friendly conversation as if they are in your shop. Besides, you can instantly answer their questions, guide them in finding what they are looking for. All this together gives them a special feeling.
- Showcasing your products: WhatsApp product catalog displays all the products in a very fantastic way. It allows you to share enticing product images along with detailed product descriptions with your customers. In this way, customers can take a look at what you have to offer, just in a single chat!
- Understand customer preferences to learn more about them: On WhatsApp, you not only achieve selling your products but also understand customer’s preferences and what they like. This information helps you to learn more to enhance your shop.
- Simple and quick shopping: WhatsApp allows users to buy instantly right there in the chat. Without any complexity, customers get their products in a simple way. It makes shopping so easy that you feel like sending a message.
- Shopping made fun: Businesses can share stories, cool messages, or even exciting updates on WhatsApp. It makes your eCommerce store fun to shop and a friendly place.
eCommerce brands can use following strategies for an effective use of WhatsApp eCommerce:
1. Shopping assistance to make your customers more reliable:
When eCommerce brands are struggling to strive in this rapidly evolving competition, giving top-notch customer support is very crucial.
WhatsApp e-commerce allows you to reach your customers quickly and vice-versa. eCommerce brands can use this platform to privately resolve customer issues.
It’s a good idea to add a WhatsApp button on your website so that customers get instant help and support via WhatsApp chat.
WhatsApp business tools does a lot more for your eCommerce business
Let’s get into it to know more
2. Sending automated notifications to reduce the rate of abandoned cart:
This is the best and must WhatsApp eCommerce strategy for the users who fail to successfully check-out the store. There are two main reasons behind this issue. First, customers browse multiple websites or stores for the same products and leave the shopping cart as it is from the earlier site. Secondly, the distraction caused just before the purchase where they forget about every item added to the cart.
However, you can send automated notifications to the customers by sending them friendly reminders about their abandoned cart. It makes their buying journey superior and your business profitable.
You should use the best WhatsApp template to send such automated notifications.
3. Foster your customers by sharing informative content:
You can build good relationships with your customers by informing them about your products. This helps customers to make better choices which are most suited to their needs. These messages indicate that you care about your customer’s experiences with your products.
Good product information with educational content helps in building your brand personality. You can also share videos about the instructions of your product usage.
These messages also give excellent post-purchase experience increasing the chances of customers coming back to your eCommerce store.
4. Present users with personalized experiences to make them feel special:
When a user allows you to contact them through WhatsApp, you will automatically get the data about their phone number and country (as per the country code on the phone number). You can also request a little more information by using the opt-in.
After gathering all the variables, work on personalizing the conversations with the customer-specific remarks. In practice, you can start by greeting users with their names; showcasing them your menu (use different language if you have specific data for the same). Then, you can ask them for further information.
Chatbot instantly provides a personalized experience irrespective of their entry point e.g. a landing page, website, ad, or otherwise.
5. Presenting customers with instant discounts on WhatsApp to cut down RTO on cash on delivery (COD):
Return to origin (RTO) is one of the major challenges for many eCommerce businesses. Here, around 40% of COD orders (out of 70%) come back and return to origin at the warehouse. These returned orders cause extra shipping charges leading to loss.
To overcome this issue, you can offer an instant discount to the users on WhatsApp as soon as they choose COD as their payment option. Such discount offers may entice users to do the payment earlier rather than going for COD.
Your discount offer can be ‘you get 10% off on the product if you pay right now’. In this way, your COD orders will get converted to prepaid and you can recover losses.
6. Send promotional messages to boost sales on your eCommerce store:
WhatsApp promotional messages are a perfect strategy to multiply sales for your business. WhatsApp allows sending promotional messages along with clickable buttons which helps in starting conversion.
You can also use templates for sending these promotional messages which are approved by WhatsApp. A few of the examples of such templates are; New Year wishes along with promo code, discount offer, or abandoned cart message etc.
Moreover, you can also send an order confirmation message combined with an upsell message that will have your other products or services.
WebMaxy helps schedule WhatsApp messages effortlessly for your eCommerce brand.
These WhatsApp eCommerce strategies will surely give a boost in your sales. When it comes to selling on WhatsApp, eCommerce brands can unlock a myriad of options.
To Wind Up:
WhatsApp eCommerce is surely one of the most innovative ways to fuel your eCommerce business. WhatsApp statistics shed light on the availability of opportunities that eCommerce brands can look for.
WhatsApp eCommerce offers a huge potential to overcome the key challenges faced by many eCommerce brands. You just need to work on creative strategies to boost your sales multifold.
Hope this blog is helpful in deciding whether to choose WhatsApp eCommerce and WhatsApp marketing for your online business. Do let us know in the comments!
You can reach out to WebMaxy at info@webmaxy.co to know more about WhatsApp eCommerce and its features.
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