Over the last decade, the Indian eCommerce industry has experienced significant evolution and revolution. The industry has shifted from vertical e-commerce to direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales to tapping customers on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to conversational commerce.
As per Future Market Insights, the global conversational commerce market was valued at USD 5345.5 million as of year-end 2021 and is forecasted to grow up to USD 26301.8 million by 2032. Given the current adoption pace of conversational commerce in India, the country’s contribution to these figures is expected to be substantial. Conversational commerce is changing the way people communicate with D2C brands, creating new potential revenue channels that were once impossible. One such innovation is WhatsApp Commerce.
WhatsApp Commerce is poised to boost sales for D2C and other online players dramatically. WhatsApp is the biggest contributor to customer engagement in India, boasting 390.1 million active users. D2C companies can leverage this platform to their advantage by using it for customer outreach and retention, leading to increased conversions, better customer acquisition, reduced abandonment, and higher customer satisfaction rates.
D2C brands can use WhatsApp Business to run lead-generation campaigns to acquire new customers, connect with their Facebook account, and run ads to reach a broader audience. They can develop personalized relationships with customers, help them place orders quickly, reduce customer acquisition costs, and most importantly, establish trust. By adding a chat option on their website, D2C brands can enable shoppers to complete their end-to-end shopping on WhatsApp seamlessly. This process eliminates the need to download multiple apps and set up different accounts and pages to complete the checkout process. It also allows for quicker and more seamless payments and removes barriers to easy conversations with the brand to resolve issues.
JioMart, a Reliance Industries’ home-grown brand, has elevated the shopping experience for its user base using WhatsApp. From simply texting “Hi” to JioMart’s WhatsApp number, shoppers can browse the grocery giant’s entire catalog, select and add items to their WhatsApp cart, and checkout after making payment via different modes available. NLP powers the entire journey, providing an interactive shopping experience. JioMart also pays attention to the post-purchase experience and sends reinforcement messages at regular intervals to reduce shoppers’ worries.
Integrating the WhatsApp Business icon on their website or placing QR codes on their packaging or banners during on-ground events can help D2C brands lure shoppers to their WhatsApp channel for immediate product discovery. WhatsApp Business allows shoppers to interact with brands anytime and keep their anxieties away. It also increases brand availability to shoppers by providing multilingual engagement, reducing brand dependency through personalized shopping experiences, and ensuring high satisfaction.
WhatsApp Commerce enables brands to receive real-time data and analytics, manage stock levels, understand customer habits and product preferences, and optimize performance to stand out from their competitors. It also reduces the risk of high return-to-origin (RTO) rates, a significant concern for most D2C brands today.
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In conclusion, WhatsApp Commerce is set to be the next big thing in not only improving sales for e-commerce and D2C brands but could also open doors of innovation for offline retailers in boosting product discovery and increasing revenue generation. Brands must realize the potential and be agile in adopting this new sales generation channel to become category leaders in their segment.
