Storefront & Orders

Overview

The Store turns your product catalog into a public, customisable mini-shop and gives you a single inbox for every order. Find it under More → Store (admin-only). It has three relevant areas:

Buyers browse the public shop, build a cart, and check out with a name, phone, and address. The storefront builds the order on your server — re-checking every price, applying coupons and shipping, scoring COD risk, and reducing stock — then hands the buyer off to WhatsApp to finish in chat. You confirm and collect payment, either by an automatic payment link or in conversation. Every order — whether it came from the storefront, the official Cloud API, Twilio, or was entered by hand — lands in one Orders inbox.

Beyond the basics, the Store includes a full closing funnel: server-side checkout with lead capture, coupons, product reviews, abandoned-cart recovery, cash-on-delivery with return-risk scoring, automatic Razorpay payment links that confirm payment for you, a private order-tracking page, and search-engine optimisation and analytics.

Prerequisites

The storefront is created during the WhatsApp Store setup wizard, which creates the shop and connects a sending WhatsApp device. If you open Storefront settings before finishing the wizard, WaDesk sends you there rather than quietly creating an empty shop.

Storefront settings

Open Store → Storefront. The View live button opens your public shop in a new tab. The form is grouped into sections.

Theme

Pick one of eight built-in themes from the visual picker. Switching is instant.

Identity & branding

Shipping

Configure a simple shipping rule. Values are entered in major units and stored in minor units:

Payment

Pick a payment provider and enter the matching detail. The simple providers just add a payment handle or link to the WhatsApp order message; the buyer pays and you confirm in chat. The Razorpay (auto) provider is different — it creates a real, per-order payment link and marks the order paid automatically once payment is confirmed (see Auto payment links).

Razorpay (auto) keys are your own. The link is created on your Razorpay account and the money settles to you — WaDesk only creates the link and listens for the "paid" notification. The secrets are stored securely per shop.

Abandoned-cart recovery

Switch on a WhatsApp nudge for buyers who enter their phone at checkout but don't complete. See Abandoned-cart recovery for how it works.

Custom domain verification

By default your shop is reachable at its built-in web address. To use your own domain, enter it in the Custom domain field (e.g. shop.yourbiz.com) and save. WaDesk then shows the CNAME target to point at.

1. At your DNS provider, create a CNAME record for your domain pointing to the CNAME target shown on the page.
2. Back in WaDesk, click Verify now. WaDesk checks your domain's DNS and confirms it points to the expected target.
3. On success the domain is marked verified, your shop serves from it, and the page reloads. On failure you see the records found and the expected target so you can compare.

Changing the custom domain marks it unverified again — you must re-verify after any change. Only a verified custom domain serves the public shop; until then the built-in web address keeps working. DNS changes can take a while to spread, so a fresh CNAME may need a few minutes (occasionally longer) before Verify succeeds.

The public storefront

The buyer-facing shop is served at its built-in web address, your subdomain, or your verified custom domain. WaDesk figures out which shop to show from the web address and applies that shop's chosen theme. Only shops that are set live are shown; anything else shows a "not found" page.

How the public web address is chosen

The buyer-facing address is chosen in three ways, in order: a verified custom domain (https://shop.brand.com); your shop's subdomain (https://yourshop.shops.brand.com); otherwise the built-in path-based address — so setups without subdomain DNS still work.

Server-side checkout

When a buyer builds a cart and checks out, the shop asks for their name, phone, and address, then sends it to your server. WaDesk does not trust the cart from the browser — it rebuilds the order on the server:

The shop then clears the cart, opens WhatsApp pre-filled with the order summary (including the tracking link), and cancels any pending cart-recovery nudge for that phone. Checkout never sends a WhatsApp message itself — it just hands the buyer a ready-to-send WhatsApp link to tap.

Lead capture. Because the phone and address are saved at checkout (and even when the buyer leaves the phone field, for recovery), you keep the customer even if they never tap through to WhatsApp.

Coupons

Create discount codes under Store → Coupons. Buyers enter a code at checkout; Apply shows a live quote, and the discount is re-checked and recorded when the order is placed.

The order stores both the code used and the discount amount, so the discount stays part of the permanent record even if the coupon is later edited or deleted.

Product reviews

Buyers can leave a star rating and review on any product page; each review is saved as pending. The product page shows a rating summary (average plus count) and the list of approved reviews — shown consistently across all eight themes.

Moderate under Store → Reviews: tabs for pending / approved / rejected, with approve / reject / delete actions and a pending-count badge in the sidebar. Only approved reviews are public, so nothing shows on the shop until you clear it.

Review submissions are rate-limited to prevent spam. New reviews always start pending — nothing is published automatically.

Customer order tracking

Every storefront order gets a unique, unguessable tracking link. The buyer can open a standalone, branded status page from that link — no login needed. The link is included in both the checkout hand-off and the WhatsApp message.

The page shows the order's progress (new → confirmed → paid → shipped), the items, totals including shipping and any discount, the delivery address, a Pay now button when a payment link is present, and a "message us" WhatsApp link. It's read-only — viewing it never changes the order or sends anything.

SEO & analytics

Public shop and product pages include the social-preview tags (Open Graph and Twitter cards) so links show a nice preview when shared. Product pages also include structured product data (name, price, currency, availability, and average rating when reviews exist) so they can qualify for rich results in search.

Page views are counted per shop per day (each time someone fully loads the catalog grid or a product page). The Store dashboard's 30-day views tile shows this real figure.

Orders list

Open Store → Orders for every order from every channel. The toolbar offers search by phone or name, a status filter, and a source filter; the list shows 25 per page. Each row shows when the order came in, the customer, where it came from, the item count, total, status, and an Open link. Count tiles summarise All / new / confirmed / paid / shipped / cancelled.

Each order records where it came from:

Order detail & status updates

The order detail page shows the line items (with image, quantity, and per-item price), the order total, and the customer's contact details. Reply on WhatsApp jumps to the chat. From the Update status card you can change the status, set or edit a payment link (validated as a URL), and add internal notes (up to 1000 chars).

Orders move through these statuses:

An order can also be removed from the detail or list actions. Removing an order deletes only the order — not the customer or the conversation. Each order keeps its own copy of the items, so past orders stay intact even if a product is later deleted.

Payment-link reminders

When an order has a payment link set, the detail page shows Send payment link via WhatsApp.

1. Set (or confirm) the payment link and save it — the reminder uses the saved link.
2. Click Send payment link via WhatsApp.
3. WaDesk composes a message addressed to the customer with the order total and the link, then dispatches it through the workspace's connected WhatsApp engine.
4. The result (sent or failed) is reported back, and the outbound message is recorded.

This sends a real WhatsApp message to the customer's number. Save the payment link first (the reminder requires a valid URL), and only use it against genuine orders.

Auto payment links & webhook auto-confirm

With the Razorpay (auto) provider set up (your own Key ID / Key secret / Webhook secret), WaDesk creates a real, per-order Razorpay payment link and can confirm payment automatically.

1. On the order detail page, click Generate Razorpay link + send. WaDesk creates a link on your Razorpay account (for the order total, tagged with the order number) and sends it to the customer over WhatsApp in one step.
2. The buyer pays via the link.
3. Razorpay notifies WaDesk. WaDesk identifies the order, confirms the notification is genuine using your webhook secret, and marks the order paid.

Other providers (UPI, static Razorpay/Stripe links, PayPal.me, bank transfer, COD) still work as paste-in handles — only Razorpay (auto) creates links and confirms payment automatically.

Abandoned-cart recovery

When a buyer enters their phone at checkout but doesn't complete the order, WaDesk can send a single WhatsApp nudge with a link back to the shop. It's off by default — enable it under Storefront settings → Abandoned-cart recovery.

1. As soon as the buyer types their phone and moves on, the shop quietly notes the cart (once per visit).
2. If recovery is enabled and a WhatsApp device is connected, WaDesk schedules a single nudge for delay minutes later (default 30). Only one pending nudge exists per phone per shop.
3. If the buyer completes the order, the pending nudge is cancelled and the cart is marked recovered.

COD & RTO risk scoring

At checkout the buyer chooses prepaid or cash on delivery. For COD orders, WaDesk computes a Return-to-Origin (RTO) risk score (0–100) and a band, so you can decide whether to confirm, ask for prepayment, or call first.

The score and band (low / medium / high) are saved on the order and shown as a colour-coded badge on the order detail page, alongside the COD label. Prepaid orders are not scored.

Troubleshooting