WhatsApp Commerce and Catalogue: Turn Chats into a Shoppable Storefront
Your customers already message you on WhatsApp asking about sizes, colours, and stock. Without a live WhatsApp catalogue, every one of those chats is a manual stock check that dies when staff are busy.
We sync your shop catalogue so browsing, carting, and ordering happen inside WhatsApp.
Sound Familiar?
These are the exact issues retail founders faced before WhatsApp shopping sync:
- Customers ask "do you have size M?" in WhatsApp while your website already shows stock, and the reply takes hours
- Staff screenshot product pages or copy prices by hand into chat, then discover the item sold out on Takealot
- Your WhatsApp catalogue is stale: last week's prices, missing variants, and photos that no longer match the site
- Interested buyers abandon the chat when nobody answers after hours, and that intent never becomes an order
- You already sell on a website or Takealot, but WhatsApp is still a support inbox instead of a sales channel
Meta requires a Commerce Manager catalogue connected to your WhatsApp Business Account before single-product or multi-product messages work. Manual CSV uploads go stale within a day on fashion and retail catalogues. Scheduled feeds top out at hourly; anything faster needs the Catalog Batch API.
What WhatsApp Catalogue Sync Actually Does
Shop updates → Meta catalogue refreshes → customer browses and orders in chat. No screenshotting product pages.
Catalogue Updates in Shop
Price, stock, or a new SKU changes in Shopify, WooCommerce, or your ERP
Meta Catalogue Refreshes
Feed or Batch API pushes title, image, Rand price, and availability into Commerce Manager
Customer Shops in WhatsApp
They open the catalogue, pick variants, add to cart, and checkout via your trusted payment path
Order Lands in Your Shop
Fulfilment sees the order, stock decrements once, and finance reconciles without retyping
Everything You Need for WhatsApp Shopping
Live Catalogue Sync
Products, variants, prices, and stock levels push from Shopify, WooCommerce, or your ERP into Meta Commerce Manager so WhatsApp shopping stays accurate.
In-Chat Product Browsing
Customers open your WhatsApp catalogue, browse items with photos and Rand prices, add to cart, and order without leaving the chat.
Stock & Price Truth
Hourly feed refreshes or near-real-time catalogue updates keep stock counts and Rand prices aligned with your store, so chat never oversells.
Order Capture Back to Shop
In-chat orders and cart events write back to your e-commerce or ERP, so fulfilment, stock, and finance stay on one source of truth.
Variant & SKU Mapping
Size, colour, and SKU fields map cleanly so a customer picking Medium Black in WhatsApp matches the same SKU on your website and Takealot feed.
Abandoned Interest Recovery
When someone browses the catalogue or drops mid-order, opted-in recovery messages reopen the same products with live availability.
Platforms We've Connected to WhatsApp Commerce
From Stock-Check DMs to R94k in Catalogue Orders
How a Cape Town fashion retailer selling on Shopify and Takealot turned WhatsApp into a live sales channel in 90 days.
The Manual Process
- Founder and two staff answered size and stock questions in WhatsApp all day
- Average reply took 40+ minutes during peak trading; after-hours messages sat until morning
- Prices pasted from memory or screenshots often disagreed with the website
- No catalogue: every buyer had to ask, wait, then EFT against an informal invoice
- Interested shoppers who never got a reply simply bought elsewhere
The Automated Process
- Shopify catalogue syncs into Meta Commerce Manager with hourly stock and price refresh
- Customers open WhatsApp shopping, browse variants, and add to cart without waiting for staff
- Payment link completes checkout; paid orders write back to Shopify for fulfilment
- Staff only step in for styling advice and exceptions, not "is size M in stock?"
- Abandoned catalogue interest gets a recovery message while intent is still warm
Before vs After WhatsApp Catalogue Sync
How It Works
From first conversation to a live WhatsApp catalogue in 2–4 weeks.
Tell Us Your Setup
Where your catalogue lives today, how WhatsApp is used for sales, and which stock questions burn the most staff time.
Free Scoping Call
30-minute call to map Commerce Manager, WABA catalogue linking, sync cadence, and payment-link or checkout options for SA buyers.
Build & Test
We wire the product feed, map SKUs and variants, connect the catalogue to WhatsApp, and parallel-test with live stock and prices.
Go Live & Monitor
Turn on in-chat browsing and ordering. Monitoring catches feed failures, rejected items, and stock drift before customers notice.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is WhatsApp Commerce and a WhatsApp catalogue?
WhatsApp Commerce lets customers browse your product catalogue, add items to a cart, and place orders inside WhatsApp. The catalogue is a Meta Commerce Manager inventory connected to your WhatsApp Business Account. Each item needs name, description, price, image, availability, and a content ID that matches your shop SKU.
Which stores can sync into a WhatsApp catalogue?
We routinely sync Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and custom ERP or POS catalogues. If you already publish a Takealot or Google Merchant feed, we can often reuse that structure. Partner apps, scheduled CSV/XML feeds, or the Catalog Batch API handle the push into Meta.
How often does stock and pricing update?
Scheduled Meta product feeds refresh as often as hourly. For flash sales, limited drops, or fast-moving fashion, we use the Catalog Batch API so price and quantity updates land in near real time instead of waiting for the next hourly fetch.
Can South African customers pay inside WhatsApp?
Most SA retailers still collect via EFT invoice or a trusted payment link (World Wide Worx found only about 17% of WhatsApp-for-sales retailers had tried payment links). We design the flow your buyers already trust: catalogue browse and cart in WhatsApp, then PayFast, Peach, Yoco, or Instant EFT checkout that writes the paid order back to your shop.
Will this disrupt our website or Takealot channel?
No. WhatsApp becomes another storefront on the same catalogue truth. Stock decrements from one master inventory, so you do not oversell between the site, Takealot, and chat. Your existing channels keep running while we parallel-test the catalogue.
How much does WhatsApp Commerce catalogue integration cost?
A one-way catalogue sync with Commerce Manager setup typically starts from around R15,000. Bidirectional builds with order write-back, variant mapping, and recovery flows usually land between R25,000 and R60,000. Most retailers recovering even a few lost chat orders a week see payback within 2–3 months.
Stop Losing WhatsApp Buyers to Stock DMs
If your website and Takealot already hold the truth on products and stock, your WhatsApp channel should not be a guessing game.
Tell us which shop or ERP you run, how customers currently buy over WhatsApp, and where size-and-stock questions burn the most time. We will show you exactly how a live WhatsApp Commerce catalogue would work for your range.