How to sell on WhatsApp Status — what to post, how often, and how to turn views into orders

TL;DR

• • Who sees it: by default, only people who have saved your number and whom you have saved.
• • What to post: one product per update, with the price and its own link. Videos, packing, customer photos and offers with end dates.
• • How often: a steady rhythm you can keep for weeks. Spread updates across the day.
• • Turning views into orders: link the exact product, reply to “price?” with the link, and let the store take the order.
• • Catalogue or website: a catalogue is fine for a few products; a store link takes the whole order.
• • Measure: views, replies and orders per day, in a simple log.

How Status works for a seller

• It lasts 24 hours. Then it disappears. That is why rhythm matters more than any single post.
• Only saved contacts see it. With WhatsApp’s default privacy setting, two people see each other’s status only when both have saved each other’s numbers. A customer who messaged you once but never saved your number won’t see it, and neither will one you never saved. You can check the setting under Settings → Privacy → Status.
• You can see who viewed it, as long as read receipts are switched on. That list is your free measure of interest.
• Links are tappable. Paste the full link in a text status or in the caption of a photo or video.
• Use the WhatsApp Business app. It is free, and it adds a business profile, quick replies (saved answers you send with a shortcut) and labels for sorting chats, which help once the replies start coming.

What to post

Think of each update as a shelf with one product on it. A good one answers what it is, what it costs and how to get it, in the few seconds before the viewer taps to the next.

• One product, one price, one link. For example: “Hand-block cotton kurta, ₹899. Sizes S to XL. Order here: yourbrand.sitesplaced.site/…”. Put the price in, so the people who reply are the ones who can afford it.
• New arrivals, with a heads-up the evening before: “New sarees tomorrow at 11 am”.
• Close-up videos: the fabric moving, the shine on a bangle, the size of a candle in someone’s hand. Things a flat photo can’t show.
• Packing today’s orders. It shows real people are buying and that you ship, without you saying so.
• Customer photos, only with the customer’s permission, and never invented.
• Answers to the questions you keep getting: “Yes, cash on delivery is available”, “Delivery in 5 to 7 days”. Only if they are true for your store.
• An offer with an end date. On SitesPlaced, coupon codes are free and can carry an expiry date, so “10% off with DIWALI10 until Sunday” ends on its own.

What to skip: forwarded messages, twenty photos of the same product, and “only 2 left” when there are twenty. Viewers remember, and they stop opening your status.

How often, and when

There is no official number. Twenty updates in a row is a lot to tap through; a few, spread across the day, are easier to watch to the end. Pick a rhythm you can keep for a month. Here is an example week for a clothing seller; change it to fit what you sell.

For timing, trust your own viewer list over any general rule. Note when the views come in on a normal day, and post just before that.

Turning a view into an order

This is where status selling leaks. Someone likes the kurta, replies “price?”, you reply an hour later, they ask about sizes, you check, they ask about COD, and by then they have moved on. Shorten every step:

• Link the exact product, not your home page. Every product on your store has its own address, and every category has its own clean link (for example yourbrand.sitesplaced.site/kurtas) for a status about a whole collection.
• Reply to “price?” with the link. Save it as a quick reply in the WhatsApp Business app. The page answers price, sizes, stock, delivery charge and COD at once, even while you sleep.
• Let chat-first buyers order from chat. WhatsApp checkout, free on SitesPlaced, sends the buyer’s cart to your WhatsApp as a ready order with the items, total and address, and saves a copy in your dashboard.
• Give a ready opener. The free WhatsApp link generator makes a link that opens a chat with a message already typed, such as “Hi, I’d like to order the blue kurta”.

The full setup, from WhatsApp checkout to shipping, is in the WhatsApp order system for small businesses. One more thing: a status that works can send many people to your store at once. On every paid plan (Starter at ₹199/month and up), a store’s pages answer about 4× faster than on the free plan, about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms in our 28 September 2026 measurements on live paid stores. “Answer” is the moment the page starts arriving on the phone, before the photos load.

Catalogue link or website link?

The WhatsApp Business catalogue lets a buyer look at products and send you a cart without leaving WhatsApp. A store link opens a page that takes the whole order. The difference is what you still have to do by hand after the tap:

With a handful of products and a few orders a week, the catalogue is fine. Once you are typing the same address questions every day, the store link wins. We compare the two properly in WhatsApp catalogue link vs a store link.

Measuring what works

You don’t need software for this. Keep a note on your phone or a simple sheet with five columns: the date, what you posted, how many people viewed it (from the viewer list), how many replied, and how many orders came in that day. After two weeks, the pattern shows: which kind of update brings replies, which products get asked about, which days are quiet.

Change one thing at a time, so you know what made the difference: a video instead of a photo, the price in the first line instead of the last, a morning post instead of an evening one. On the Starter plan, SitesPlaced’s store analytics shows visits and your top products, so you can also see whether the product in today’s status got more visits than usual.

Growing the number of people who see it

• Save every buyer’s number, and ask them to save yours: “Save this number to see new arrivals first.” Put that line in your order confirmation message and on a card in the parcel.
• Put a WhatsApp QR code on your parcels, your counter and your stall. The free WhatsApp QR code generator makes one.
• Tell your Instagram followers that new drops appear on your WhatsApp status first, with the number in your bio.

Status works best as one part of your WhatsApp selling, alongside broadcasts used sparingly and quick replies. The wider playbook is in how to sell on WhatsApp, and if you post on Instagram too, how to use Instagram Stories to sell covers the same idea there.

Frequently asked questions