How to Start Selling in Chat With No Website

There is a large group of sellers who are told to get a website and do not need one.
They sell inside WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook chats. Their catalogue is a photo album
or a broadcast list. Their order book is the chat history. Their accounts are a notebook
or a bank app.

This works until it works too well. At thirty orders a month the chat history is
manageable. At three hundred it is not, and the failure is always the same: an order
agreed in a conversation that nobody acted on.

The usual advice is to build a store. That is often the wrong first move. A store is a
second place to maintain, it needs traffic you do not have, and it sends your existing
customers somewhere they did not want to go. The better first move is to make the
conversation you already sell in capable of finishing a sale.

Why starting in chat is not a compromise here

In Southeast Asia buying in a chat is ordinary behaviour, not an experiment. A Facebook
and Boston Consulting Group study published in 2019 found that 26% of
online shoppers in Malaysia had already bought through a chat conversation, with Thailand
at 40% and Vietnam at 36% (reported via KrASIA). The study is old and should be dated whenever it is
quoted, but it describes a habit that predates every current tool.

On preference, a Kantar survey of 11,056 adults in 22 markets commissioned by Meta,
fieldwork April to September 2025, found 73.3% of consumers prefer messaging when
contacting a business and 74.6% trust a business more when they can message it (Meta, State of Business Messaging).
Meta sells business messaging, so that is the seller’s own research. Still, if your
customers already message you, you are not behind. You are in the right channel without
the tooling.

The four things to set up

1. A catalogue in a Google Sheet

Two tabs. Products, and orders.

The products tab needs one row per thing you sell, with a name, a price, variants if
any, and whether it is available. Nothing clever. The point is that it is structured, so
software can read it, and in one place, so there is one correct price.

This is the easiest zero-subscription way to start selling in chat. Be clear with
yourself about what it is not: it is not an order management system, it has no stock
control worth the name, and it will stop being enough. That is fine. It is a first step,
and sellers grow into a proper store from it.

The discipline that makes it work is dull. One sheet, one price, updated when the price
changes. If you keep a second price list in your head, the automation will contradict
you.

2. Payments in the chat

A payment link sent into the conversation. The customer taps it, pays, and stays in the thread.
No checkout page, no account to create, nothing for them to find again.

Two things to get right from the start. The money should settle into your own account
with your own payment provider. AeroChat never sees card numbers and never holds your
funds, and money settles directly into your Airwallex balance. And payment confirmation
should reach your systems rather than depending on the customer sending you a screenshot.
AeroChat confirms every payment twice, once when the Airwallex webhook fires and again
when the customer lands on the confirmation page.

If you currently take payment by bank transfer and a screenshot, this single change is
usually the largest improvement available to you. It removes the manual check, the
mismatched amounts and the “sorry which order was this for” message.

3. Delivery booked from the same place

Taking the order is half the job. AeroChat books delivery with POS Malaysia directly:
create a shipment and label, book a pickup, reschedule or cancel it, track a parcel, quote
an international rate. Delivery updates go back to the shopper on the channel they
used.

Which means the “where is my parcel” message, the single most repetitive thing you
deal with, gets answered without you. Note that the payment provider and the courier are
separate connections. Neither goes through the other.

4. The workflow that ties them together

You describe what should happen in plain English. There is no flow builder to learn and
no code. A first version for a small seller is usually four rules:

When someone asks about a product, check the Sheet and reply with the price and
whether it is available.
When they say they want it, confirm the quantity and send a payment link.
When payment is confirmed, record the order and book the delivery.
When they ask where it is, check the tracking and answer in the same chat.

Then the limits, which matter more than the rules: the largest discount it may give,
whether it may promise a delivery date, and what it must pass to you. Those are enforced
by the system, not left to the AI’s judgment.

What the orders tab should hold

The products tab gets the attention. The orders tab is the one that saves you, because
it is the thing your chat history is currently doing badly.

One row per order, written when payment is confirmed rather than when the customer says
yes. Enough columns to answer a question three weeks later without scrolling a
conversation: date, customer name, the channel they messaged on, their number, what they
bought, quantity, amount paid, the payment reference, the delivery date, the tracking
number and a status.

The status column is the useful one. Paid, packed, shipped, delivered, problem. Five
values, no more. With that single column you can answer “what do I owe people today”
without reading anything, which is the question that keeps small sellers up at night.

Two habits that make it hold up. Never write an order that has not been paid, keep
unpaid enquiries somewhere else. And never edit an amount after the fact, add a second row
for the adjustment. Both rules exist so that the tab still reconciles against your bank
statement in six months.

Three things that will bite you

The WhatsApp account you use. Running automation on WhatsApp needs the
WhatsApp Business Platform, and the number you connect cannot be active on the normal
WhatsApp app at the same time. You will also need a Meta Business account and business
verification. Sellers consistently describe this as the hardest part of starting. Budget
patience, not money, for it. See WhatsApp Business API.

Replies now cost money. Since 1 October 2026 Meta charges for service
messages, the free-text replies inside the 24-hour window a customer’s message opens. The
first 1,000 per business phone number per month are free and do not roll over (Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform pricing documentation). At
small volumes you will stay inside the free tier. Know that the line exists before you
grow into it.

Automating the wrong pile. Automate price questions, availability,
payment and tracking. Do not automate complaints, refunds beyond your limit, or anything
requiring a decision about a specific customer. Those should reach you with the
conversation attached. See live chat handover.

What good looks like after a month

You should be able to answer three questions you probably cannot answer today. How many
enquiries did I get. How many became orders. How many went quiet after a question I
answered late.

That third number is the one to watch. It is the clearest measure of what the old setup
was costing you, and it is usually larger than sellers expect.

Start for free

AeroChat runs customer service and sales workflows you describe in plain English. There is a free plan, so there is nothing to decide today.

Start for free on the Shopify App Store

Not on Shopify? Create an AeroChat account here.

How to Start Selling in Chat When You Have No Website

Why starting in chat is not a compromise here