Does the WhatsApp button on your website reach the front desk?

Friday in October, ten past seven in the evening. Hotel Azahar, call it that, is a small hotel up in the hills with nine rooms and a reception desk staffed until ten. A family in Utrecht is looking at the website on a phone, on their sofa at home. They want a family room for the long weekend in early December. Bottom right there is a round green button. They tap it, WhatsApp opens and they write: “Hi, do you have a room for two adults and two children from 5 to 8 December?”

Nothing buzzes at reception. Whoever built the website put the button there in 2021, and the number they used was the owner’s mobile, which that evening is face down on a table at a family lunch in Málaga. He sees it at half past eleven and replies yes. By then the family has booked somewhere else, on a page where the free dates were visible.

Nobody did anything wrong on purpose. The button works, the message arrived and the owner answered as soon as he saw it. What fails is where it lands.

One button, four questions

Whoever taps the green button takes four things for granted: that a chat opens, that the chat is with the business, that the business will see it while it is open, and that they will know where the message came from. The website only really controls the first. The other three depend on the number inside the link and on which phone that number lives on.

It is the same problem we described with the appointment form that never reaches the desk: the person does everything right, feels reassured, and there is nothing at the desk. WhatsApp makes it worse in one way: the customer sees the message sent in the chat and assumes they have told the business.

How the link is built

That button is a link, and WhatsApp explains how to build it on its help page How to use click to chat. The shape is https://wa.me/ followed by the full number in international format. No zeroes, no brackets and no dashes; the help page’s own example of what not to use has a plus sign, a 00, a dash and brackets. For a Spanish number, that means https://wa.me/34 with the number straight after it, all run together.

The same page says three more things worth knowing. The person you are writing to needs an active WhatsApp account, so the number in the link has to actually have WhatsApp. Click to chat works both on the phone and on WhatsApp Web, so anyone who taps the button on a computer ends up in WhatsApp Web. And you can add a pre-filled message, which appears in the chat’s text field, with ?text= and URL-encoded text after the number.

If you use the WhatsApp Business app, there is another route. According to the help page How to create short links, the app generates a short link for the business when you create the account, under Tools > Short link. If the customer has WhatsApp, the chat opens; if they open it in a browser, they see a web page with your business information and a Continue to chat option.

The five-minute check, with a phone that has never messaged you

Borrow a phone from someone who does not have your chat open, ideally someone outside the business, and turn the wifi off so it runs on mobile data.

Open the business website on that phone without going through bookmarks: type the name into the search engine and go in the way a customer would. Find the WhatsApp button. Notice whether you find it without thinking, and whether it covers anything, like the booking button or the phone number.

Tap it. Look at who the chat opens with: a business, a person or a bare number. Type a word nobody would use, “test apricot 19:10”, and send it.

Now go to the desk, or ring it, and ask whether it arrived. If it did, ask where: on the desk phone, on the reception computer or in someone’s pocket. If nobody has seen it within ten minutes, you know what happens to the real messages.

Last, ask whoever runs your website for the exact link behind the button and compare its number with the one on the door, in the website footer and on the Google profile. If they do not match, you already have a second number in circulation, which is what we wrote about in the two phone numbers on a Google profile.

Where it has to ring

The number behind the button has to be the business’s WhatsApp, the one somebody watches during opening hours, not a person’s. Two details from WhatsApp’s help make that easier than it sounds.

First, the landline works too. The help page about international phone number format says a landline can only be registered on the WhatsApp Business app, and that the verification code comes through a call to that landline. If the business already has a landline on the door and on the profile, it can be the number behind the button as well. One number for everything.

Second, the primary phone does not have to be glued to the desk. According to the help page on linking a device to WhatsApp Business, the app can be used on up to four linked devices at once without keeping the primary phone connected, from Linked devices > Link a device. The reception computer can be one of them. The condition is logging in on the primary phone at least every 14 days; otherwise the linked devices disconnect. In other words, the primary phone cannot spend the winter in a drawer.

The message that is already written

A blank chat makes the customer start from scratch, and at reception nobody knows whether that person came from the website, the profile or a leaflet. A pre-filled message fixes both. Something like “Hi, I’m writing from the Hotel Azahar website” is enough: the customer only has to add the dates, and whoever answers knows where it came from.

On the link with the number it goes at the end, with ?text= and URL-encoded text, as the click to chat help explains. On the WhatsApp Business short link you set it up in the app itself, which lets you create and edit the default message.

If the button says Book and what it opens is a chat, the problem is a different one, and we covered it in the Instagram Book link that opens an empty chat: the word promises a diary and the chat does not have one.

When it is better left off

If nobody can look at WhatsApp during opening hours, the button promises something the business does not deliver. A phone that rings at the desk and a form that lands in an inbox somebody opens are better than a green button that leads to a chat read at half past eleven at night.

It does not replace a diary either. WhatsApp is good for the quick question, the photo and the “I’m at the door”, and bad at keeping track of rooms or appointments; we explained why in WhatsApp Business or a bookings page.

And if the button already reaches the business’s WhatsApp, on the same number as the door and with a pre-filled message, leave it alone. Run the check again whenever the person on the desk changes or the desk phone does, which is usually when it breaks.

If you would rather we did it

If the number in the link was the only thing wrong, you do not need us: ask for it to be changed and run the check again with the borrowed phone. If the check showed you more, like three different numbers between the door, the profile and the website, or a button covering the booking one, that is where we come in. Presence (€3,450) gets the website, the profile and the door telling the same story, with a single number and a WhatsApp button that reaches the business. Bookings (€5,450) adds appointments or reservations on your own domain, so WhatsApp stays for questions rather than the diary. Operator (€7,950) is the size above, for when messages are already coming in every day and somebody has to answer them. Care (€149/month) is who runs the borrowed-phone check every month and notices when the button has gone back to an old number; it travels with the work, not an extra you drop to save money.

Web & eCommerce packages. A person writes back within 24 hours.