How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for an online store (2026, free to start)
You need your shipping and returns policy and your product catalogue, a WhatsApp number on a phone you control, and about ten minutes.
Building and testing the bot is free with a 30 message demo and no card; putting it on WhatsApp runs on the Starter plan at US$29 a month, which opens with a 7 day trial.
September 2026
What this bot does for an online store
Five jobs it takes off your team, with the kind of exchange you will actually see in the transcript.
Answers the shipping question before the cart is abandoned
Delivery time, cost and free-shipping threshold, per region. This is the single most common reason a WhatsApp message arrives, and the single most common reason a checkout is not finished.
Customerhow long to Córdoba and how much is shipping
BotCórdoba is 3 to 5 working days. Shipping is 4,900 and free over 60,000. Orders placed before 2pm go out the same day, and you get a tracking link by WhatsApp when it ships.
Explains returns in plain language
Window, condition, who pays the postage, how the refund comes back. Customers ask before they buy, and a clear answer closes more sales than a discount code.
Customerif it doesnt fit can i send it back
BotYes, 30 days from delivery, unworn and with the tags on. The first exchange is free and we send a prepaid label; a refund instead of an exchange costs 3,500 for the return postage and lands back on your card in 5 to 7 days.
Helps customers pick the right size or variant
It answers from your size guide and product notes, including the fit quirks you know about. Fewer returns, and a customer who feels advised rather than sold to.
Customerim usually a M, which size in the linen shirt?
BotThe linen shirt runs one size large and is cut loose, so most people who wear M take S in this one. If you prefer it oversized, stay with M. Chest measurements are on the size guide for both.
Answers stock and restock questions
It answers from your catalogue, and where a restock date is genuinely open it takes the customer's number for an alert. A captured number beats a guessed date.
Customerthe black boots in 39, coming back?
BotThe black boots in 39 are out of stock right now. I do not have a restock date, so let me take your number and the team will message you the day they arrive. They usually come back within four to six weeks.
Triages order problems and hands them over
It collects the order number, the problem and a photo if there is damage, then puts a person on it with everything already in the thread. Nobody asks the customer to repeat themselves.
Customerorder 48122 arrived broken
BotSorry about that. I have logged order 48122 as damaged on arrival. Can you send a photo of the item and the box? Someone from the team is picking this up now and will confirm a replacement or a refund today.
Build it in eight steps
Steps one to five are free and take about ten minutes. Step six is where WhatsApp, and the plan, come in.
Create the account
Open chatbotgen.com and sign up with an email address or a Google account. No card is asked for here, and none is needed for anything in steps one to five.
You should see: The onboarding wizard, open on the template picker.
Pick the E-commerce Helper template
Choose E-commerce Helper. It loads a starting prompt, three suggested questions and a widget colour written for this kind of business, so you are editing a draft instead of facing an empty box. Every line of it is yours to change.
You should see: A new chatbot in your dashboard with the prompt already filled in.
Train it on material you already have
Open Knowledge and paste your website address; the crawler reads your public pages and turns them into the bot's memory. Then upload the documents you hand people anyway: the shipping and returns pages, the size guide, the product care instructions and your FAQ.
You should see: Each source moves from processing to trained. A twenty page site is usually done in two or three minutes.
Write down the answers your website never did
Still in Knowledge, open Q&A and add the questions your staff answers on the phone all day. For a store that is usually: how long delivery takes to each region, what a return costs, whether an item runs small, and what happens when a parcel is late. Two sentences per answer is enough; the model writes the rest in its own words.
You should see: Each pair listed as its own source, trained within seconds.
Test it before anyone else does
Use the preview chat on the chatbot page and ask what a real customer asks. Start with "How long does delivery take and can I return it if it does not fit?" Then ask the same thing badly, with a typo and no punctuation, because that is how it will arrive.
You should see: A correct answer with the source it came from. Wrong or vague? Fix the source, not the prompt. Your free demo covers 30 messages, which is enough for this.
Connect WhatsApp by scanning a QR code
Connect your existing WhatsApp number in about a minute by scanning a QR, with no Meta Business verification. Open the chatbot's WhatsApp tab, press Connect, and a QR code appears. On the phone that owns the number, open WhatsApp, go to Settings, Linked devices, Link a device, and scan it. No Meta Business account, no verification form, no approval queue. This step runs on the Starter plan, US$29 a month, opening with a 7 day trial.
You should see: The status flips to Connected within a few seconds, and the next customer message is answered on your own number. Keep that phone charged and online, exactly as it already sits on your counter.
Decide when a person takes over
A person should take over the moment a customer names an order number with a problem, because that needs your order system and a decision. You do not need a dashboard for this. If you answer a customer yourself from the linked phone, the bot records your message, steps back from that conversation for 30 minutes, and each further reply of yours pushes the pause forward. It resumes quietly, without announcing itself.
You should see: Your own replies appearing in the conversation history in the dashboard.
Go live, then read the first fifty conversations
Put the number on your website, your Google Business profile and your Instagram bio. Then read the transcripts. Every question the bot did not have an answer for yet is one Q&A pair away from being answered forever, and the first week is where the whole quality of the thing gets decided.
You should see: A Conversations tab filling up, and a growing share of messages answered end to end without you.
What to feed it
A bot is only as good as the material behind it. These are the sources that answer the most messages for an online store, in the order worth doing them.
The shipping page
Times and prices per region, cut-off time, free-shipping threshold, and what happens with a failed delivery.
The returns and refunds policy
Window, condition, who pays postage, exchange versus refund, and how long the money takes to come back.
The size or spec guide
Measurements plus the fit notes your customer service team knows by heart: runs small, stiff at first, fades after a wash.
The product catalogue
Crawl your store so descriptions, materials and care instructions are in the training. Re-crawl when the range changes.
Payment methods
Cards, instalments, bank transfer, cash on delivery, and any regional method your customers ask for by name.
Your top ten support tickets
Pull them from your inbox. These are the exact questions the bot needs to answer, written in the words customers actually use.
Set it up so customers trust it
Three settings that separate a bot people keep writing to from one they stop trusting. Each is a line in the prompt, and each one is a minute of work.
Route these to your team
- Route order-specific questions to a person with the order number and the problem already captured, so nobody asks the customer to repeat themselves.
- Let a person set expectations on a parcel already in transit.
- Let your team approve refunds, discounts and goodwill. The bot explains the policy that applies and hands over warm.
- Keep card details and payments in your checkout, where customers expect to see them.
It answers in your customer's language
It replies in the language the customer writes in, across the thirteen the model handles well. If you sell across borders, that removes the delay that turns a pre-sale question into an abandoned cart.
Hand the conversation to a person when
- Any message with an order number and a problem behind it.
- A refund, a discount or an exception to policy.
- A wholesale, bulk or business enquiry, which is a different conversation entirely.
What people ask before they build one
Can it check my Shopify or WooCommerce orders?
Not out of the box. It answers policy and product questions from your own content, and for anything order-specific it collects the number and hands the thread to a person. If you want live order lookups, that is what the API and a custom tool are for.
Do I need a Meta Business account or the official WhatsApp API?
No. You connect by scanning a QR code from the phone that owns the number, the same way WhatsApp Web does. There is no Meta Business verification, no approval queue and no per-message fee.
Will it push people to buy?
Only as much as you tell it to. The template is written to answer well and offer the next step, not to chase. On WhatsApp, pressure reads as spam and gets you blocked, which costs you the number your customers already know.
What does it cost to run?
Building and training the chatbot is free, with a 30 message demo to test it and no card. Connecting WhatsApp is on the Starter plan: US$29 a month for 3 chatbots and 2,000 messages, opening with a 7 day trial that does ask for a card. Prices are flat, not per message.
Can it also run on my website at the same time?
Yes. The same chatbot, trained once, runs as a widget on your store and on WhatsApp and Telegram at the same time. Every conversation from all three lands in the same dashboard.
What happens when I answer a customer myself?
The bot gets out of the way. Your reply, typed on the linked phone, is recorded in the conversation and the assistant stops answering that thread for 30 minutes; every further message from you pushes the pause forward. It starts answering again quietly once the conversation has gone cold, so it can never talk over you mid-sentence.
Build it now, decide later
The E-commerce Helper template, your own material and ten minutes. Nothing to install and no card for the free build.