Link Previews | Developer Documentation

Check a missing or incorrect WhatsApp link preview

A WhatsApp message can contain a working URL without a card showing its title, description and image. When you send through ChatArchitect, check the destination, the website's preview data and the behavior of your connected sending tool separately. A website prepared for previews does not guarantee that every message will display a card.

Start with the exact message and URL

1. Record the connected business number, sending tool, message type and exact URL used in the attempt. Distinguish a link in ordinary body text from a URL button in an approved template.
2. Open that exact URL on the recipient's device and check the final destination. Use the website and app link checklist if redirects or an app are involved.
3. For a plain-text test, use one complete HTTPS URL so that you know which destination is being checked. Meta's text-message preview mechanism considers the first URL in the body when a preview is requested.
4. Check the documentation or settings of the connected sending tool for preview support for that message type. If you cannot find the option or the received result differs from the tool's preview, ask ChatArchitect support about your specific integration.

If you own the destination website

Ask the website maintainer to check the HTML returned for the destination. Meta's link preview reference describes Open Graph data in the page's <head>: og:title, og:description, og:url and og:image.

<head>
  <meta property="og:title" content="Delivery help">
  <meta property="og:description" content="Check delivery options and contact our team.">
  <meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/help/delivery">
  <meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/images/delivery-preview.jpg">
</head>

This is illustrative HTML for your own website. Replace the values with the real page and image. Meta specifies that the head data appear within the first 300 KB of HTML, that the title, description and canonical page URL be nonempty, and that the preview image use an absolute URL. Its current image guidance is less than 600 KB, at least 300 pixels wide and a width-to-height ratio no greater than 4:1.

Check that the page and image can be fetched without signing into your CRM or website. For a page owned by someone else, give its maintainer the exact URL and observed result; changing your ChatArchitect credentials does not change that site's preview data.

Compare the received result

After a website or sending-tool change, repeat a permitted test from the same ChatArchitect integration. Check the card on the recipient's WhatsApp client and verify its destination. A successful manual paste into a personal WhatsApp chat can help assess the website, but it does not prove that the CRM sends a preview request or supports the same message type.

If the URL opens but there is no card, record that as a preview issue. If the URL does not open, investigate the destination separately. Keep the received result, WhatsApp client, sending tool, time with time zone and a screenshot together when contacting support.

Keep preview fetching separate from campaign clicks

WhatsApp can fetch a website to build a preview. That request does not prove that the recipient tapped the link or visited the offer. Use the campaign link measurement guide when comparing website requests and human actions.