Customer messages & enquiries

When a customer fills in your store's contact form, their message lands in the Messages tab of your dashboard (the page is headed Enquiries) and you get an email at your account address. From there you can reply on WhatsApp, by email or with a phone call in one tap, track each message as New → Read → Replied → Archived, and keep a private note on it. Messages are free on every plan.

Read and reply to a message

1. 1Open the Messages tab. A strip at the top shows Total, New, Read and Replied counts, and the dropdown on the right filters the list by All, New, Read, Replied or Archived.
2. 2Each row shows the customer's name, a status pill, their email and phone if they gave them, the date, and the first line of the message. A blue dot marks unread messages.
3. 3Click a row to expand it. Opening a New message marks it Read automatically.
4. 4Use the reply buttons: Reply on WhatsApp opens a chat with *"Hi [name], thanks for reaching out!"* pre-filled (shown only when the customer left a phone number), Reply by email opens your mail app with the subject *Re: your enquiry*, and Call dials the number. Tapping Reply on WhatsApp or Reply by email marks the message Replied.
5. 5Under Update Enquiry, change the Status or add an Internal Note (not visible to customer) — e.g. *"Followed up via WhatsApp on 15th Jan"* — then click Update Enquiry.

Use Archived for anything you are done with; there is no delete, so archiving is how you keep the list tidy. Switch the filter to Archived to see old messages again.

Where the messages come from

The contact form is the Contact Form section on your Contact page. It asks for Name (required), Email, Phone and Message (required) and submits with Send Message. Below the form there is an optional WhatsApp shortcut that opens a chat to your store number with the name, phone and message pre-filled — that shortcut does not create an entry in Messages, because the conversation happens in WhatsApp.

Edit the section's heading, intro text and information sidebar in the Design tab — open Design → Contact and click Contact Form. Some templates also let you enter your response hours there; the card only appears once you fill them in, so the store never promises a reply time you did not set. Hidden the Contact link from your menu? Customers can still reach the page at /contact if you link it from the footer; see Navigation & menu.

Other ways customers reach you

• Order questions — the customer's full contact details are on the order itself in Orders, with a WhatsApp link, so you do not need the contact form for those.
• Pre-sale questions — switch on the WhatsApp chat bubble in Settings → Sales boosters to put a floating WhatsApp button on every page, with an optional pre-filled message. It uses the number from Store details.
• Newsletter sign-ups — email addresses collected by newsletter sections go to the Subscribers tab, not Messages.
• Automatic WhatsApp alerts for new orders are a Growth-plan integration — see WhatsApp order notifications.

Good to know & troubleshooting

• No email arrived — notifications go to the email on your SitesPlaced account. Check spam, and check the message is in the Messages tab; the tab is the source of truth even if an email is delayed.
• Form says the store was not found — the form only accepts messages on a published store. Drafts cannot receive enquiries.
• Reply on WhatsApp is missing — the customer did not enter a phone number. Reply by email instead, or make the phone field more prominent in the form's intro text.
• Internal notes are only ever visible in your dashboard. The customer never sees status changes or notes.
• Messages are per store; if you run two stores, each has its own Messages tab.