WhatsApp Link With a Pre-Filled Message: How to Write One
The short answer
WhatsApp has a link format that opens a chat with your number and can leave a suggested message already typed. The WhatsApp Business app will generate a short link for you in its business tools area. The link is the easy part. What decides whether it works is the message you leave waiting in the box.
The WhatsAssist team ·
The friction you are removing is small and specific. To message you, somebody has to find your number, save it, open WhatsApp and search for you. Every one of those steps is a place to give up. A link removes all four.
But almost everybody spends their effort on the link and none on the text it leaves typed, which is backwards. The link only gets somebody to the box. The message decides whether they press send.
How do you make one?
WhatsApp has a link format that opens a direct chat, and it can carry a suggested message. You need two things: your number in international format, with no spaces or symbols, and the text you want waiting in the box, if you want any.
The WhatsApp Business app will also generate a short link for you, in its business tools area, alongside the QR code. Menu wording and position move between app versions and phone makers, so look for the business tools section rather than following a fixed path. If you want the printed version of the same idea, the WhatsApp Business QR code covers where a scannable code earns its place.
Why does the pre-filled message matter more than the link?
Because it does two jobs at once, and both of them are worth more than the click you already had.
It lowers the effort of writing. A blank box asks a stranger to compose an opening line, and a surprising number of them decide it can wait. A box with a sentence already in it asks for a tap.
And it tells you where the person came from before you have replied anything. Compare these two:
Weak: “Hi, I would like more information.”
Better: “Hi, I saw this on Instagram and I want to ask about the blue dress.”
The second one names the source and the product. If you use a different link in each place, with different text, your inbox becomes an attribution report with no analytics tool involved.
One rule makes the text write itself: write it in the customer’s voice, not yours. They are the one sending it. “Hi, I want to book a table for Friday” works. “Thank you for contacting [business name]” does not, because nobody talks like that about themselves.
What text should each place get?
The right message depends on what the person was looking at when they clicked.
| Where the link lives | Message worth pre-filling | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram or Facebook bio | ”Hi, I came from Instagram and I want to ask about…” | Names the source, and the reader finishes the sentence themselves |
| A specific product post | ”Hi, is the [product] still available?” | The one question that post generates, already asked |
| Your email signature | ”Hi, following up on my email about…” | Connects two channels the tools cannot connect for you |
| A printed receipt or flyer | ”Hi, I bought from you today and…” | Turns a completed sale into a reachable customer |
| A Google Business profile | ”Hi, are you open now?” | Matches what people search before they visit |
| Your website footer | Leave it empty | A visitor already reading your site has their own question |
The last row is the one worth arguing with. A pre-filled message helps when you can guess the question. When you cannot, an assumed question is worse than a blank box, because the person now has to delete your text before writing theirs.
Where does this actually convert?
Anywhere the reader is already interested and the alternative is work.
It earns the most in a social bio, on a product post, and on anything printed that leaves the building with a customer. It earns the least on your own website, where a visitor is already engaged and has their own words ready.
Two failures are worth avoiding. Do not put a link where a QR code belongs, or the other way round: a link in a shop window is unusable, and a QR code in an Instagram caption asks somebody to scan their own screen. And do not use one link everywhere, because then you have deliberately thrown away the only free attribution you were going to get.
What happens after they send it?
This is the part the link cannot help with, and it is where most of the value leaks out. You have just made it easier for more people to message you, at all hours, with questions that mostly repeat. If those messages sit unanswered for a day, the link has converted a stranger into a disappointed stranger.
WhatsAssist answers them for you. Once setup is finished it replies to a customer message without you doing anything, on every plan, using your own business details and the conversation so far. It only ever replies to somebody who messaged first, which is exactly the shape of traffic a link produces. And when it would have to guess, it does not answer: that reply waits for you in the app with the reason attached. What each plan includes is on the pricing page, and what the product does and does not do is on the features page.
If the volume is the problem rather than the speed, replying to customers faster without hiring anyone works through the same question from the other end.
A two minute test before you publish it
Open the link on a phone that is not yours, ideally one that has never saved your number. Check three things: the chat opens on your business account rather than a personal one, the text arrives intact, and the message still reads like something a customer would plausibly write.
That last check catches the most common mistake. Text written in your own marketing voice looks obviously pasted, and people delete it before sending, which loses you the attribution you built the whole link for.
It is also worth testing the link from a phone that already has your number saved, because that is the case where a wrong number format tends to hide. A link that works for you and silently fails for a stranger is the worst possible outcome, since nothing tells you it happened and the enquiry simply never arrives.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a WhatsApp Business account for this?
The link format works with a WhatsApp number generally, but the Business app is what gives you a generated short link in its business tools, alongside the QR code, and it is what you want anyway for a business number.
Should every link have a pre-filled message?
No. Use one wherever you can predict the question, and leave the box empty wherever you cannot. An assumed question the reader has to delete is worse than no suggestion at all.
Can I tell which link a customer used?
Only by writing different text into each one and reading what arrives. That is the whole attribution trick, and it costs nothing.
Will the message send by itself?
No. It arrives typed in the box and the person still presses send, which is why the text has to read like something they would actually say.
Does WhatsAssist work on an iPhone?
No. It depends on Android notification access and requires Android 10 or newer. There is no iPhone version and no announced release date.