Case study
Building a WhatsApp storefront after Meta said no
Industry
Herbal wellness retail
Location
South Africa
Client
Confidential
The problem
A WooCommerce retailer wanted customers to browse and order entirely inside WhatsApp. The obvious route was Meta's Commerce Catalogue, the feature that powers WhatsApp's built-in product browser. Partway through the build, Meta declined most of the client's product range for catalogue use, a category-level restriction with no appeal process. Pushing against it risked getting the client's WhatsApp Business number flagged, which would have taken the entire ordering system offline.
The brief changed from “connect to Meta's catalogue” to “deliver a catalogue-quality shopping experience without it.”
What we built
Step 1
Ordering engine
FastAPI backend on the WhatsApp Cloud API, wired into WooCommerce: browsing, cart, checkout, both EFT and card payments.
Step 2
Graphical storefront
A native WhatsApp Flow, full-screen multi-select product picker with images, pulling live stock from WooCommerce.
Step 3
Fixed the image pipeline
Client images weren't fetchable by Meta's servers. Converted, self-hosted, and added fallbacks so a bad image never breaks a card.
Step 4
Dynamic checkout
Standard vs. express shipping flowing correctly through cart totals, order summaries, and the final WooCommerce order.
Step 5
Self-service content
Client edits the bot's messages in a Google Sheet. Bad edits fall back to a known-good default instead of breaking the bot.
What changed
The client got a full graphical, browse-and-buy storefront inside WhatsApp with zero dependency on Meta's restricted catalogue, taking real orders end to end with correct shipping and payment attribution. They can now edit their own bot copy without a developer, safely, since a bad edit just falls back to a known default instead of breaking anything. The system stayed live and taking orders through every phase of this, including the phase where the original plan stopped working.
Technologies
FastAPI · WhatsApp Cloud API · WhatsApp Flows · WooCommerce REST API · Google Sheets API · Railway