The simple things make life easy. One of them is WhatsApp. And more specifically: customer service through WhatsApp. I love it when companies offer WhatsApp support. What I love a little bit less is when they offer it, but they make me jump through hoops to get to it. I recently ordered some shirts from SuitSupply and ended up needing their support. This is what I ran into:
The email address wasn’t linked and thus not clickable, nor were the WhatsApp numbers. Talking about making me work for it… Now, I don’t even need to know your WhatsApp number. I just need you to give me a link that works. And this stuff ain’t hard, so here comes the explanation:
How to create Clickable WhatsApp links
WhatsApp makes linking to a chat on WhatsApp super simple by allowing you to link to their wa.me short domain. So, instead of showing that number in full, making it all look super complicated, just do the following:
<a href="https://wa.me/31655110516">Talk to us on WhatsApp</a>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)Leave out all the spaces, dashes, and pluses. You can even add a text to start with:
<a href="https://wa.me/31655110516?text=I%20need%20help%20with">Talk to us on WhatsApp</a>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)On their official support page, WhatsApp also provide official “chat on WhatsApp” buttons, but I’d probably just use a text link myself. That’s it! Easy does it.
And then it could look something like this:
Now, of course, they really should underline their links too, but that’s another matter.
Post Scriptum: other links
So, you really also should link all email addresses with mailto: links and phone numbers with tel: links, so I can click them and start writing that email or start calling you:
<a href="tel:0031655110516">Call us</a>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)or:
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">Mail us</a>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)It’s not just WhatsApp links, everything that you expect me to do on a phone, you should be making it easier for me, and adding links like this is super simple.
