Facebook to add 'online shopping features' to WhatsApp

In the future, it seems that soon you can shop online from the WhatsApp mobile application. At the annual F8 developer conference, Facebook talked about ways to improve WhatsApp for companies and is trying to change the experience while chatting with companies. While we would have to wait to shop directly from WhatsApp, Facebook is now adding the option to allow companies to add a catalogue of products within WhatsApp chats.

WhatsApp users can see a business catalogue within WhatsApp when chatting with a company, with this new feature, "With catalogues, businesses can showcase their goods so people can easily discover them," said Facebook. It would be interesting to see how Facebook integrates this function in the chats while we wait for it to arrive later this year.

Facebook is expected to quickly add more business features like these as we get closer to WhatsApp payments that are officially launched. "We have a test that is running in India for WhatsApp (payments) now, we're hoping to launch in several other countries at some point, but I don't want to put a timeframe on that here, but it's something that we're actively working on," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO recently in an earnings call with analysts.

Facebook has shown great interest in helping companies connect with potential customers. In addition to WhatsApp, Facebook is also looking for ways to boost businesses in their Messenger application. Facebook has created an appointment experience so that people can book appointments within a Messenger conversation. With this new feature, users will soon be able to book an appointment with companies (such as car dealers, stylists or cleaning services, etc.) within the Messenger application.

In the ongoing F8 conference, Facebook has also announced that it is adding lead generation templates to the Ads Manager. It is expected that this feature will help companies to easily create an ad around a simple question and answer session in Messenger"to learn more about their customers."