Chpter — WhatsApp Commerce Platform
Redesigned merchant onboarding, built WhatsApp campaign tools, and designed an omnichannel management system — cutting response times by 91% and boosting checkout conversion by 8pp.
−91%
Response Time
+8pp
Checkout Conversion
30%
AI Merchant Adoption
1,000+
Active Merchants
Overview
Chpter is a WhatsApp commerce platform that lets merchants sell products, manage orders, and communicate with shoppers across WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and other social channels.
As Lead Product Designer, I owned the end-to-end design lifecycle — managing a design intern, setting the design direction, and collaborating with the marketing lead on the brand's online presence.
Three major product areas
- Fixing a broken onboarding experience that was losing merchants before they started
- Designing WhatsApp campaign tools to help merchants reach customers proactively
- Building an omnichannel management system that unified conversations across WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and AI
The Problems
1 — Onboarding was losing merchants before they started
- The merchant onboarding process was long, complicated, and confusing
- Users were dropping off mid-flow; the CX team was spending significant time manually finishing onboarding over calls and WhatsApp
- Every merchant who couldn't self-onboard was a cost to the business and a delay to revenue
2 — Conversations were siloed by platform
- Merchants managed WhatsApp and Instagram DM conversations in separate, disconnected views
- No unified inbox and no way to see a customer's full conversation history across channels
- Merchants were losing context and dropping threads when customers switched platforms
The Strategy
Three problems, one strategic principle: reduce the effort merchants need to operate their store.
Onboarding
Cut the steps. Don't ask for information you can infer or collect later. Get merchants to their first sale as fast as possible — anything non-essential moves to post-onboarding.
Campaigns
Make WhatsApp campaigns feel as simple as sending a message to a friend — not like configuring an enterprise marketing tool. Merchants are shopkeepers, not marketers.
Omnichannel
Don't make merchants think about which platform a conversation came from. Unify everything into one view and let them switch channels without losing context.
Success Metrics — Defined Before Design
- Reduce onboarding drop-off by at least 40%
- Reduce CX team intervention in onboarding to under 10% of new merchants
- Reduce average response time below 15 seconds across all channels
- Increase cart-to-checkout conversion by at least 5 percentage points
The Process
Onboarding Redesign
- Audited the existing flow: mapped every step, identified drop-off points, and interviewed the CX team about the most common support requests
- Found the flow asked for too much too early — business verification, product catalogue, payment configuration, and branding all happened before the merchant had any sense of value
- Restructured into progressive onboarding: get the store live in 3 steps (name, first product, payment), then drip the rest over the first week
- Added inline guidance and progress indicators so merchants always knew where they were and what was left
Campaign Builder
- Researched how merchants currently communicated proactively — most were copying and pasting messages into individual WhatsApp chats manually
- Designed the campaign builder as a 3-step flow: select audience → compose message (with templates and media) → schedule or send
- Built audience segmentation that felt visual: merchants pick from groups like 'bought in the last 30 days' or 'abandoned cart' rather than writing query logic
- Added preview and test-send so merchants could see exactly what their customers would receive before hitting send
Omnichannel Inbox
- Mapped how conversations flowed across WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and the AI assistant — identified that merchants were losing context when customers switched channels or when AI escalated to human
- Designed a unified inbox where all conversations appear in one stream, tagged by channel
- Built a channel switcher: merchants see a customer's full history across all platforms and can continue on any channel without losing context
- Designed the AI handoff flow: when the AI escalates, the human agent sees the full conversation with a summary of what was discussed and what the customer needs
- Made the active channel visually distinct with colour-coded badges and a persistent channel indicator
The Solution
Onboarding
A progressive onboarding flow that gets merchants to their first sale in 3 steps. Non-essential setup surfaces gradually over the first week. CX team intervention dropped dramatically.
WhatsApp Campaigns
A campaign builder that lets merchants select an audience, compose a message with templates and media, preview it, and schedule or send — all in under 2 minutes.
Omnichannel Management
A unified inbox across WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and AI with channel switching, full conversation history, and AI-to-human handoff with context summaries.
AI Store Assistant
The AI assistant control panel embedded in the dashboard — merchants configure tone, set escalation rules, and monitor performance in real time.
What I Learned
- Onboarding isn't about collecting information — it's about delivering the first moment of value as fast as possible. Everything else can wait.
- WhatsApp campaigns for small merchants need to feel like messaging, not marketing software. The moment it feels like Mailchimp, you've lost them.
- Omnichannel design is a context problem, not a layout problem. The hard part isn't showing all the channels — it's making sure the merchant never loses the thread of a conversation when it moves across platforms.
- Managing a design intern through this taught me that clear design briefs with annotated examples save more time than any number of review rounds.
- Leading design direction with the marketing lead meant my work extended beyond the product into the brand's online presence — that cross-functional collaboration shaped how I think about design holistically.
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