WhatsApp has announced that it will be adding a new feature in its application to promote shopping on the messaging service, called “Carts”.
Back in November, the Facebook-owned application added the Shopping button to make it easier for customers to access catalogs of various business accounts. Now the Carts feature would be next in line. The instant messaging application has been making a push towards promoting shopping on the platform, and carts will go a long way towards making the experience more convenient.
The company says that more and more shopping is happening through these services. These Carts feature will make it easier for customers and businesses to keep a track of products being bought and sold. Moreover, this will make ordering multiple items a much easier task.
To avail this feature, customers need to visit any business account which they follow or talk to. There they can select multiple products from its catalog and tap “add to cart”. Once the order is complete, the user needs to send it as a message to the business. The company has said that the business needs to have a catalog so that its customers can use this feature.
This will solve a big issue that exists with shopping on WhatsApp. If a user wants to order multiple items, he has to place an order multiple times, thus making the overall experience quite inconvenient. This problem bother businesses too, who have to keep track of multiple orders from the same client. However, with Carts, instead of getting multiple messages for multiple orders from a particular person, businesses will get one message including every item that the person has ordered. The company also claims that this will also make it easier for businesses to keep track of order inquiries, manage requests from customers, and close sales.
According to the company data, more than 175 million people message a WhatsApp Business account every day and more than 40 million people view a business’ catalog each month. This includes more than 3 million in India, a country where the company has over 400 million users. To make sure that more people use this application in the country, the company has introduced this feature. The company had also introduced its own payment feature which is powered by Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The feature is going live globally, today.
