WhatsApp is a brilliant tool for business communication. I strongly recommend WhatsApp Business to anybody who needs to communicate with clients both internally and externally.
If you want to implement a WhatsApp widget on your WordPress website, there are quite a few free plugins to choose from but, if you want to offer multiple numbers or groups to visitors, there is a free plugin called WP Chat App which also has a premium version called WhatsApp Chat WordPress. The ability to offer multiple numbers is quite useful, especially if you have a business that has multiple customer-facing departments. Think about a car dealership for example, they might want three numbers, one for sales, one for the workshop, and one for spares.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you the basics of setting up WP Chat App.
The Example
In this example, I’ve added three numbers to the WhatsApp chat widget. In this case, the client has a Sales, Workshop, and Spares department.
Download, Install, and Activate the Plugin
The first step is to download, install, and activate the plugin. If you’d like a bit more functionality, I’d recommend the premium version which, at the time of writing, costs $25 (USD). It’s a one-time payment with lifetime updates. If you’d prefer, you can try out the free version first.
Configuring the WhatsApp Chat Plugin
Now that everything is ready, let’s started by adding the WhatsApp accounts you want to use. You can do this on the WordPress dashboard, just look for WhatsApp on the righthand side and click on Add New Account. Next, define the Account Name and add the Account Number or Group Chat URL. If you’d like, you can also define a Title and a Predefined Text message. The title will appear under the account name on the widget so if they are the same, you’ll see they are duplicated as in my example above. You can at this point create multiple accounts if you need to.
Setting Up the Floating WhatsApp Widget
Now that the accounts have been created, it’s time to setup the floating widget. You’ll find the Floating Widget settings under the same WhatsApp menu on the WordPress dashboard. First begin by selecting the accounts you want to include on the widget. You can order the accounts by dragging them up and down using the hamburger on the right. You can also specify what days you want them to appear on by clicking on the days. Once you’ve done adding the accounts you can click on the Design tab and refine the design or head to the Display Settings tab where you can define things like whether you want the widget to appear on desktop or mobile or both.
Good to Go
Once the floating widget is finished, you’re good to go. If you don’t want to use the widget, you can also use the shortcodes for each account and place them where ever you like on your site.
Wrapping it Up
There you have it. A brilliant WhatsApp widget plugin what supports multiple WhatsApp accounts/groups and best of all, the free version will probably be sufficient for most sites.
Enjoy, and get the most out of WhatsApp as a marketing and communication tool.
