1. What labels actually do
Labels are your own filing system inside WhatsApp Business. You create them, name them, and put them on chats so you can find and group those chats later without long scrolling.
Customers never see your labels. A label lives only inside your app, for your eyes. A buyer will not know that you have marked her chat as Payment pending, and she will not see its colour.
Without a system, orders live in two weak places. The first is your memory. The second is scrollback, the long river of chats that moves every time a new message arrives. Both fail on busy days. A boutique owner remembers the morning enquiry while she is packing a noon order, then a salon booking comes in, and by evening the morning enquiry has slipped below twenty newer chats.
Memory also fails when more than one person answers messages. If you take an order in the morning and your assistant packs it in the afternoon, she should not have to read the full chat from the top to know its stage. A label tells her the stage in one glance.
Labels do one more useful thing. One chat can carry several labels at once, and they show stacked on the chat. A customer can be Paid and Repeat buyer at the same time. A chat can be New enquiry and Needs my reply at the same time. Real orders often belong in more than one group, and labels allow that.
You can create up to 20 labels, but most small shops need far fewer. Build a small set that follows one order from the first hello to the day the buyer comes back again. If you are still setting up the app itself, start with setting up your WhatsApp Business account first, then build your labels before the chats pile up.
2. Create and apply labels, in plain steps
Applying a label to a chat takes a few seconds once you know where the option sits.
- Open WhatsApp Business and go to your chat list.
- Press and hold the chat you want to label.
- Open the labels option from the menu that appears.
- Tick the labels that fit this chat.
- Save, and the labels will show on the chat.
To create a new label, open the Chats menu and go to the labels screen. Add a label, give it a short name, and pick a colour. Keep names short enough to read at a glance. Payment pending is clear and short.
Colour helps more than most sellers expect. Give Needs my reply a bright colour that pulls your eye in the morning, and keep stage colours apart so two labels never look the same at a glance.
You can manage labels from the same labels screen. You can edit a label name when your wording changes. You can edit its colour when two labels look too similar. You can delete a label you no longer use, so the list stays clean and current.
A short caveat matters here. Icons and menu names vary a little between app versions and between phones. The labels option may sit under a slightly different menu name on your phone. Look for the word Labels in the chat menu and in the Chats section, and you will find it.
One change is also on the way for some accounts. WhatsApp is gradually rolling labels into lists, so some accounts see lists instead of labels. If your app shows lists, do not worry. The idea works the same way. You still name a group, you still add chats to it, and you still work through the group stage by stage.
3. A label set that covers one full order
A good label set follows the life of one order. When a chat moves, the label moves with it. Here is a starter set that covers most small shops, from a home bakery to a reseller to a small boutique.
- New enquiry: a buyer has asked about a product, a price, or a booking, and no details have gone out yet.
- Details sent: you have sent photos, prices, sizes, shades, or timings, and the ball is now with the buyer.
- Payment pending: the buyer has confirmed the order and you are waiting for payment.
- Paid: payment has arrived and the order is confirmed from your side.
- Packed: the item is packed and ready, or the booking is noted and ready for the day.
- Sent for delivery: the parcel has left you, or the delivery person has collected it.
- Delivered: the buyer has the item, or the service is complete.
- Repeat buyer: this person has bought from you before and is likely to buy again.
- Needs my reply: the next move is yours, whatever the stage, and you must not let this chat sit.
The first seven labels walk in order, and a chat should mostly move forward through them. Repeat buyer describes the person, not the stage, so it can sit beside any stage label. Needs my reply is an alarm bell, and it should come off the chat the moment you have replied.
Eight or nine labels are plenty for most shops. Twenty confused labels are worse than none, because nobody can remember what each one means. If a stage never happens in your shop, drop it. A salon may never need Sent for delivery. A bakery may rename Packed as Ready for pickup.
Labels also pair well with saved answers. While you label a chat Details sent, you will often send the same price list again and again. That is where quick replies for common answers save real time, so the label records the stage and the saved reply does the typing.
4. A daily and weekly routine
Labels only work if you use them every day. A perfect set that you update once a month is decoration. A simple set that you update as you work becomes a habit.
Start with one rule. Label every new chat the day it starts. When a new enquiry arrives, put New enquiry on it at once, even before you reply in full. When details go out, change it to Details sent in the same minute. The label should always tell the truth about today, not about last week.
Then give yourself a short morning sweep. Before the shop opens, or with your first tea, open two labels only. Open Payment pending and write a polite nudge to each buyer waiting there. Open Needs my reply and clear every chat that is waiting on you. This sweep takes minutes, and it protects the two places where money and trust leak most often, late payment follow up and slow replies.
During the day, move chats as the work moves. Payment arrives, so Payment pending comes off and Paid goes on. The parcel leaves, so Packed comes off and Sent for delivery goes on. Do the change while the parcel is still in your hand, not later when three new chats have arrived.
When an order completes, move the chat to Delivered. Leave it there for a short while, in case the buyer writes back. When some time has passed and the buyer was happy, add Repeat buyer. A Delivered list shows you what finished. A Repeat buyer list shows you who trusts you already.
Close the week with a ten minute tidy. Open each label in turn and ask one question. Does this chat still belong here? Move the chats that have moved in real life. Remove alarm labels that you have already handled. Delete nothing in a hurry, and argue with nobody about it. Just make the board match the shop again.
5. Message everyone under one label
A label is not only a filing tool. From a label, you can message all customers under it, and WhatsApp creates a broadcast to those customers. That turns your filing system into a gentle selling tool, without any new list to build by hand.
Open the label, choose the option to message the customers under it, write your message once, and send. Each buyer receives it as a normal chat from you, and replies come back in that buyer own chat. Nobody sees the other buyers.
This works best when the label describes people who share a real reason to hear from you. A Delivered list might get a care note or a request for a review. The clearest case of all is Repeat buyer.
A Repeat buyer list is the warmest audience a small shop has. These people have paid you, received from you, and come back or shown they would. They do not need to be convinced that your shop is real. A short note to this list about a fresh kurti drop, a new cake flavour, a festival slot at the salon, or fresh stock at the kirana store will land very differently from the same note sent to strangers.
Keep the message short and easy to answer. One product, one reason, one clear next step. Send it at a time when you can actually reply, because warm buyers answer fast.
Broadcasts have rules of their own, including who receives them and how buyers save your number. Read how broadcast messages work for sellers before you send to a big list, so your message reaches people instead of sitting unseen.
Use label broadcasts with restraint. One useful message now and then builds sales. A message every day trains even loyal buyers to ignore you.
6. Mistakes that make labels messy
The first mistake is making all 20 labels on day one. It feels productive, and it is not. You end up with labels for stages that never happen, labels that mean almost the same thing, and labels so narrow that only one chat ever fits them. Start with the starter set in this guide, live with it for two weeks, and add only what your real orders demand.
The second mistake is using labels as permanent storage and never moving a chat forward. A chat marked New enquiry three weeks ago is not an enquiry anymore. Labels tell the truth only when they move. If moving them feels like extra work, your set is probably too big.
The third mistake happens in shops with two pairs of hands. Two people in one shop use different label names for the same stage. One writes Payment pending, the other creates Waiting for money, and soon the same stage lives in two places and neither list is complete. Morning sweeps miss chats, follow up misses buyers, and both people blame the system.
The fix is plain. Keep one shared list of labels, with one short line on what each label means and when a chat moves to the next one. Write it on paper and keep it near the counter, or keep it in a note both of you can open. When a new stage is truly needed, add it to the shared list first, then create it in the app together.
The fourth mistake is quieter. Sellers label orders with great care and forget enquiries and complaints. A question that has no label is a question that can vanish. Put Needs my reply on every chat that waits on you, including the unhappy ones, so far fewer buyers have to write a second time to be heard.
7. Frequently asked questions
How many labels can I create?
You can create up to 20 labels in WhatsApp Business. Most small shops do well with eight or nine. Add a label only when a real stage in your orders needs one.
Can one chat have more than one label?
Yes. One chat can carry several labels, and they show stacked on the chat. A buyer can be Paid and Repeat buyer at the same time, because one label describes the order stage and the other describes the person.
Can customers see my labels?
No. Labels exist only inside your app, for you and anyone who works on your business phone. Customers never see the names or colours you have put on their chats.
My app shows Lists instead of Labels. Is this guide still useful?
Yes. WhatsApp is gradually rolling labels into lists, so some accounts see lists instead of labels. The system in this guide works the same way. Name your stages, add chats to the right group, move them as orders move, and message a whole group when you need to.
Do labels work on linked devices?
Labels are managed best on the main phone where your business account lives. Some things can be limited on linked devices, so do your label setup and your weekly tidy on the main phone to be safe.
Get started
Labels organise the chats that a good catalog link starts, so set up your nine labels today and run the morning sweep tomorrow. If buyers still struggle to browse your products before they chat, Catalink gives you one clean catalog link to share, and every enquiry from it lands in a chat you can now label and follow.
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