WhatsApp announces new features for businesses

A new article on Social Media Today reports that Facebook-owned social platform, WhatsApp has announced that it will be expanding its in-app shopping options, and also giving brands some new tools for managing their interactions to maximize business potential.

WhatsApp have noted a significant increase in business activity in 2020, possibly indicating to the reason behind the addition of these features.

They commented on this, stating:

“WhatsApp has become a simple and convenient resource in this time. More than 175 million people every day message a WhatsApp Business account. Our research shows people prefer to message a business to get help and they’re more likely to make a purchase when they can do so.”

What features are coming?

WhatsApp spoke about some new features they are adding to the platform:

“We will expand ways for people to check out available products and make purchases right from a chat. We also want to make it easier for businesses to integrate these features into their existing commerce and customer solutions. This will help many small businesses who have been most impacted in this time.”

WhatsApp posted this promotional video, regarding its upcoming in-stream purchase features to its official twitter account:

WhatsApp is also looking to implement a feature that allows businesses to manage their WhatsApp messages through Facebook’s hosting services:

“We’re announcing a new way for businesses to store and manage their WhatsApp chats with customers using Facebook’s secure hosting infrastructure which will roll out early next year. This will make it easier to onboard to WhatsApp Business API, allow them to respond to WhatsApp messages faster, keep their inventory up to date and sell products through chats.”

Unfortunately, businesses won’t be able to use all of these shiny new features for free:

“We will charge business customers for some of the services we offer, which will help WhatsApp continue building a business of our own while we provide and expand free end-to-end encrypted text, video and voice calling for more than two billion people.”

With all these new features coming, it really wouldn’t be surprising if WhatsApp sees an even bigger increase in business activity!