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Three sections, not a storeroom of folders
Whoever reads it comes away knowing how many sections to open in their WhatsApp catalog and what to call them, instead of copying the folders from their storeroom.
By Yodai · Published September 6, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026
Once you know which product opens your WhatsApp catalog and which questions keep coming up in chat before someone buys, the next question shows up, and this one sneaks up on you: for the rest of the catalog, do you put each item in its own folder, or leave everything together in one long list?
Both ways fail, just in different ways. A folder per product turns the catalog into a warehouse: to compare two similar options, the customer has to jump in and out of several sections in a row, and every new folder you open is a decision you won't remember the reason for later. Everything in a single list of thirty items is even worse. Hardly anyone scrolls through thirty items looking for theirs: most people just close the chat and ask somewhere else.
Both ways fail, just in different ways. A folder per product turns the catalog into a warehouse: to compare two similar options, the customer has to jump in and out of several sections in a row, and every new folder you open is a decision you won't remember the reasoning behind. Everything in a single list of thirty items is even worse. Hardly anyone scrolls through thirty items looking for theirs: most people just close the chat and ask somewhere else.
Count the questions, not the products
Before you create a single section, go back through the last two months of conversations. Don't look at what you sell, look at the exact words people use to ask for it. That phrase, once it repeats, becomes a section. If it doesn't repeat, it's not a section, it's just a standalone product that belongs inside another one.
A flower shop might carry twenty different items, roses, tulips, carnations, dried flower arrangements, potted plants, but only three ways people actually ask for them in chat: "I need something for today," "I want something to keep at home," and "this is for an order with a specific date." Those three phrases are the three sections you need. Not Bouquets, Indoor Plants, and Dried Arrangements, which is how the products look from behind the counter.
The same rule works for a service, even when there's nothing to wrap up and hand over. A dental office doesn't split its catalog into Fillings, Orthodontics, and Cleanings just because that's how treatments are filed in the patient's chart. It splits by "something hurts right now," "I want to fix up my smile," and "my regular checkup," because that's how the patient actually shows up in chat: with a problem, with a half-formed idea, or just on schedule.
A restaurant that takes catering orders adds a wrinkle: there, you don't get three phrases, you get four. "I want to eat here," "I want it to go," "this is for an event on a specific date," and "I'm just asking about the drink menu." Four sections aren't more or less correct than three: they're whatever comes out of actually counting that specific business's conversations, not applying the same fixed number to everyone.
Laid out in a table, the pattern is easy to spot: every business has its own questions, but they all come from the same place, the chat, not the storeroom.
Inside-out, or outside-in
- Comes from your storeroom or your supplier's catalog
- Makes sense in your head, not your customer's
- Grows without limit: every new product wants its own folder
- Comes from the questions that repeat in chat
- The customer recognizes their question in the section name
- Stays at three or four sections even as the catalog grows
Which one should you pick: Go with the second option, unless you have fewer than eight products total: with that few, one undivided section can be scanned in a single glance, and splitting it up just adds an extra click.
You won't notice the difference between the two approaches on day one, with ten products loaded in by hand. You'll notice it six months later, once you've got forty items in there and can't remember which folder you put the last one in. Organizing by product means deciding all over again where each new thing goes. Organizing by question doesn't: the question already exists, you just have to drop the product into the section it belongs to.
How to land on the right number of sections
- 1Unsorted list
Write down every product or service as is, without grouping anything yet. - 2Write down the question, not the name
Next to each one, write the phrase a real customer uses to ask for it in chat. The ones that share a phrase go together. - 3Cap it at four
If you end up with more than four groups, bump them up a level: combine the similar ones until you're down to three or four sections. Two phrases that start differently but land on the same decision, for today and it's urgent, for example, are the same section said two different ways. - 4Whichever opens first goes on top
The section that holds the product you decided should be the first thing people see always goes at the top of the list.
With the flower shop's three sections, the order inside the app looks like this:
The storeroom disguised as a catalog
The number of sections isn't set in stone, but you don't tweak it every week either: you revisit it when what you sell really changes, not every time you add a single new product. A new product goes into a section that already exists. A new section only gets created when a question starts coming up that never used to.
Once the sections are decided and named, the catalog runs itself, no more explaining it over chat. Next up is what the customer sees the second they open each listing, even before they read the price.
- Catalog sections decided by the questions that keep coming up in chat, not by how you organize your inventory
- A maximum of three or four sections, with the one customers open first placed at the top
- Section names written the way the customer would ask, not in your own internal jargon
Three scenarios
Answer before opening each one. If one gives you trouble, go back to the section that explains it.
1. An auto parts store has four hundred items, and right now they're organized into eighteen folders, one per brand. What should they do first, before touching a single folder?
Look back at two months of conversations and jot down the exact phrase customers use to ask for each part, not the brand. If most people ask by license plate or car model, that's where your categories should come from, and eighteen folders by brand shrink down to three or four, organized by what people are actually asking about.
2. A bike repair shop offers six services: tune-ups, brake replacement, chain replacement, tire inflation, gear adjustment, and wheel assembly. The owner wants to give each one its own section. Would you recommend that?
No. With only six services, one undivided section can be scanned at a glance; creating six folders just forces an extra click for each one without saving any time. The rule of splitting sections based on chat questions is for catalogs with a lot of items, not half a dozen.
3. A home decor store imports from three different suppliers and currently organizes its WhatsApp catalog by supplier: Supplier A, Supplier B, Supplier C. Customers ask a lot of questions but buy very little. What's going on, and what should change?
She's copying her warehouse into the catalog: the supplier matters to her, not to the customer, who's thinking about which room they're decorating or what style they're after. Replace those three sections with the real questions customers ask in chat, for example living room, bedroom, outdoor, and mix products from all three suppliers within each one.
Once the sections are set up, what decides whether the customer buys without asking any questions is no longer the order or the folder name: it's the photo they see before they even read the price.
In Yodai the WhatsApp bot answers with your prices and your hours, and hands the chat over when someone asks for a person. See how the WhatsApp bot for your business works.
NextThe photo that sells before anyone reads the price