Run an online store's customer messages on one WhatsApp number
An online store's messages arrive in pieces: a size question before the order, a delivery question after it, and a return two weeks later. Endelir puts all of it on one business number — your team answering in a shared inbox, your own system sending the order and dispatch updates, and campaigns going only to customers who have opted in.
The customer is already writing; your systems are not
Orders arrive from a website, an ad and a marketplace listing. The messages that follow come from everywhere at once: a size question before the order, a customer who has paid and heard nothing since, someone asking why the tracking says delivered when nothing arrived. They land on a handset at the desk and get answered in whatever order somebody happens to notice them.
Meanwhile the order record already knows the answer. It knows the parcel was packed on Tuesday and handed to the courier on Wednesday. None of that reaches the customer unless a person copies it out by hand, so a busy day produces late confirmations, dispatch notes that went to some orders and not others, and a queue of "where is my order" that your team works through one at a time.
One number for the whole order, from first question to reorder
Endelir connects your business number to the WhatsApp Business Platform and gives your workspace three things: a shared inbox where your team answers, chat flows that handle the first few steps, and a REST API that lets the system holding the order send its own updates. Pre-sales questions reach a person. Order confirmed, dispatched and delivered are sent by the order record itself, so they go out when the event happens rather than at the end of the day.
Endelir does not watch your shop. The packaged Shopify and WooCommerce connections are not available to switch on today, so nothing reaches WhatsApp on its own — your store's order webhook, or a short script beside it, calls Endelir when the state changes. For the same reason there is no cart tracking, no product catalogue and no checkout inside the conversation. What is real today is the message, the reply, and the record of both against one contact.
The path a customer takes
- 1 They arrive with a question From an ad, a QR code on the packaging, or the link on your product page. When the chat starts from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, Endelir stores which ad it was — the click id, the source and the headline — against that first message.
- 2 A flow or a person answers Keyword auto-replies cover what gets asked all day: delivery times, sizes, the returns window. A chat flow can ask what they are looking for, write the answers onto the contact record, and hand the conversation to a salesperson.
- 3 The order is placed in your store Checkout happens where it already happens. Endelir is not part of it and does not know the order exists until your system says so.
- 4 Your system sends the confirmation One authenticated call carries the customer's number, the approved template and the values that fill it — order number, item, amount. Business-initiated messages use a template Meta has approved in advance.
- 5 Cash on delivery is checked before packing The same route sends a confirm-or-cancel question. The customer's answer is posted back to a URL of yours, signed and retried, and your system decides what happens to the order.
- 6 Dispatch, delivery, and whatever goes wrong Each stage is its own call with its own template and tracking link. A reply — wrong flat number, hold it until Saturday, one item missing — opens in the shared inbox on the same thread and goes to whoever is on dispatch.
- 7 They hear from you again A question flow collects feedback after delivery and saves it to the contact. Later, a campaign to a contact group can offer a refill or a reason to come back, to customers who have opted in — which Endelir checks before it sends.
What this looks like in practice
A retailer selling home and kitchen goods takes most orders on its own website, about half of them cash on delivery. Confirmations went out from a spreadsheet each afternoon, COD orders were checked by phone calls that mostly went unanswered, and returns were argued out over email while the customer waited a day for each reply.
Now the site's backend calls Endelir at five points: order placed, COD confirmed, dispatched with the courier's link, out for delivery, delivered. The COD question goes out when the order is placed rather than in an afternoon batch, and packing waits for the answer. Pre-sales questions and return requests land in the shared inbox and are assigned to a named person. The afternoon spreadsheet is gone, and the calls that remain are the ones where somebody genuinely needs to talk.
What can happen next
Where this fits across an online store
What to know before you set it up
An update about an order the customer placed is a Utility message: it is about a transaction they started, and that is the permission it rests on. A discount code, a reorder prompt or a sale announcement is Marketing — a different template category, and one that needs the customer's consent on record. Endelir refuses a marketing campaign to a contact with no consent stored, and to anyone who has opted out. Keep the two apart and send them as separate messages rather than folding an offer into a dispatch note.
There is no packaged Shopify or WooCommerce connection to switch on today, and no cart tracking, catalogue or checkout inside the chat. Every order, dispatch and COD message described here is sent because your own system called Endelir's API — a small job for the developer who maintains your store, but one worth budgeting for before you plan the launch. Endelir passes the values through as given, so a blank order number or a stale tracking link goes out exactly as supplied. Send to a test contact first.
Once a number is connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform it can no longer be used in the ordinary WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app on a handset, so many stores take a fresh number and keep the old one for staff. Replying to a customer who wrote to you first needs no template; starting a conversation, or answering after that window has closed, uses a template Meta has approved in advance. Endelir syncs template status from Meta so you can see what was approved and what was rejected, but the decision is Meta's. How many messages and seats your plan includes is on the pricing page, and the software enforces it exactly.
What to watch
- How many pre-sales questions get an answer, and how quickly
- How many orders receive a confirmation at all
- How long after each event the update actually goes out
- How many COD orders are confirmed before packing, and how many are cancelled
- How many "where is my order" questions still reach a person
- How many customers opt in, and how many opt out
- How many customers order again after a campaign to an opted-in group
Related
Questions people ask
Can I use WhatsApp for my online store?
Yes, for the conversation and the messaging around each order. Customers ask before they buy, your team answers in a shared inbox, and the system that holds the order sends confirmation, dispatch and delivery updates through Endelir's API. Marketing goes to customers who have given consent, which Endelir checks before it sends. What does not happen in the chat is the shop itself: there is no catalogue, no cart and no checkout inside the conversation today, so the order is still placed on your website or wherever you already take it.
Does Endelir connect to Shopify or WooCommerce?
Not today. The packaged shop integrations are built but not available to switch on, so nothing moves between your store and Endelir on its own. The working route is the API: your store's order webhook, or a short script beside it, calls Endelir when an order is created, paid, packed, dispatched, delivered, cancelled or refunded, and Endelir sends the approved template for that stage. It is a small job for whoever maintains the shop, and it has the advantage of firing on your real order states rather than a guess at them. When a packaged connection does open, it will get its own page naming the exact events it covers, rather than a general claim that everything is handled.
Can order and delivery updates go out automatically?
Yes, once your system tells Endelir the event happened. Each stage is one authenticated call carrying the customer's number, the approved template and the values that fill it — order number, item, amount, a tracking link. Nothing waits for a person to open a panel. Because business-initiated messages use a template Meta has approved in advance, you can send the update whether or not they wrote to you recently. Replies come back into the shared inbox on the same thread as the update that prompted them, and Endelir can post those replies to a URL of yours so the order system hears about a change request too.
Can I send offers and discounts to my customers?
Yes, to customers who have opted in. A campaign goes to a contact group using an approved Marketing template and can be scheduled in your own timezone. Endelir checks consent before sending and refuses a marketing message to a contact with none recorded, and to anyone who has opted out — that is enforced in the software rather than left to your team to remember. Do not load a purchased or scraped list; the permission has to be something the customer actually gave you. Keep offers separate from order updates instead of adding a discount code to a dispatch note, because that turns a Utility message into a Marketing one.
Can customers browse products and pay inside the chat?
No. There is no product catalogue, no cart and no payment collection inside the conversation today. A chat flow can send photographs or a PDF catalogue, and it can hand the conversation to a salesperson, but the buying happens on your own store. If you take payment through a link from your own payment provider, you can send that link in the conversation — the money goes to you directly and Endelir is not part of the transaction. Anything beyond that is not available yet, and this page will say so until it is.
What about abandoned carts?
Endelir does not watch your checkout, so it cannot notice a cart going cold by itself. The route that works today is the same one the order updates use: your store decides a checkout is stale and calls Endelir to send the reminder. Treat that message as Marketing rather than Utility — it is a prompt to buy, not an update about a purchase they completed — which means it needs the customer's recorded consent, and Endelir will refuse it without one.
Do I need a separate number for this?
Most stores take a fresh one. A number connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform can no longer be used in the ordinary WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app on a handset, so if the number printed on your packaging is also the number your staff carry, moving it takes that handset out of use. Using a new number for the store and leaving the old one alone avoids that, at the cost of printing the new one on the next batch of packaging. Either way it has to be a number you control and can receive a verification code on.
Ready to connect customer conversations to your store?
Bring your number and the system that holds your orders. We set the connection up with you on a call, and send the first confirmation to a test contact before a customer sees anything.
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