Open WhatsApp directly

[Vladimir]

when someone clicks the WhatsApp icon I would like it immediately to open WhatsApp but instead it opens a chat window and then WhatsApp.

[Helga]

Folks, our former Wishlist portal, where our users shared their requests and suggestions, was transferred to this forum. You’re most welcome to vote, add new ideas, and leave your comments here — we surely will consider them all!

Original Votes: 15

[ElfsightBot (Elfsight Assistant)]

Original comment from Alex Castiglioni transferred from the previous Wishlist portal:

I think the widget lack a little bit of UX. When user clicks on the chat btn, a window opens. The expectations are that the conversation continues there inside the window, but as soon as the user clicks on ‘Start Chat’ its taken to the whatsapp app on its phone. It’s a 3 steps process with the second one being useless. Hope it’ll be updated soon! Thank you!

[Helga]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your comment!

I do see your reason, however, at the moment our Whatsapp widget is a tool to open an initial Whatsapp app that has to be installed on the device. So our widget is a provider to the needed chat that takes place on Whatsapp.

We’ll try to consider your requests and think about what can be done to have a chat right in the window on the page.

Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts here!

Helga, Community Manager

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[ElfsightBot (Elfsight Assistant)]

Original comment from Asaf Blechner transferred from the previous Wishlist portal:

Since 2019 people are asking you about this? It’s really hard for me to understand why you guys do not take care of this. See how many people want a direct connection from clicking the button directly to the WhatsApp link (the automatic WhatsApp message). It’s true that you can do this with your new feature called “Add Button”, but the design of this WhatsApp Widget wins big here and it can really affect the conversions rate. I think you should address this, you have a great company; Listen to your customers who give you feedback.

[Helga]

Hello Asaf,

I totally understand your frustration, and we ourselves are disillusioned that we haven’t implemented this feature yet.

You see, this option appeared to be more complicated than we had expected, and its realization requires a lot of research and efforts, although it looks quite the opposite.

We realize that a lot of people would benefit from this feature, and I’m truly sorry that we have to make our customers wait for it to go live for so long.

We’ll try to pay attention to this idea in our future updates, I’ve already let our Dev Team know how desired it is.

Thank you for your understanding!

Helga, Community Manager

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[ElfsightBot (Elfsight Assistant)]

Original comment transferred from the previous Wishlist portal:

If in all this time there has yet to be the internal funding diverted to make this feature a reality then it is likely that it never will.

It is easier to simply allow WA own team to maintain that side of the codebase, as it would be quite a considderable investment.

Perhaps there is an open source option that could be modded ?

[Helga]

Hi Bertie,

Thanks a lot for your comment!

It’s true that at the moment we don’t have a solution to open a chat directly in the WhatsApp, but we do have plans to have a deeper research and try to make it happen in our nearest updates.

I do believe our dev team will find a way

Helga, Community Manager

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[Max]

Friends, this request is now marked as ‘Planned’, which means we’re currently exploring possible development options, so it’s on our radar

Please note that we can’t provide any specifics at this stage, as we’re still in the process of estimating potential solutions. Let’s hope we’ll see it in the “In Progress” status, though!

[Dean_Lewis]

This is actually a big deal when using the Widget. I see it’s planned but that was from October, 2019.

[Max]

Hi there, @Dean_Lewis

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Yep, the feature was requested in 2019, but we’ve changed its status to Planned in October 2025. At the moment, the feature status is still Planned, but we really hope the devs will be able to start working on it soon.

As soon as we have more news, we’ll update you here right awat