You’ve built a loyal page following and know how to excite your customers with great content. But are you closing sales on social media too? If you offer physical products that you’re able to ship to customers, Facebook & Instagram shops should be the next step in your strategy.
With the current restrictions in physical stores and spike in time people are spending on social media, there’s never been a more important time to start your social commerce journey. Here are your first steps to selling to your products on Facebook…
You have three options…
- Start a Facebook shop on your existing company page and link products to your website
- Sync your Shopify (or other e-commerce site) with your Facebook page so customers can purchase straight from social media
- Place your products on Facebook Marketplace
Start a Facebook shop on your company page
If you have an existing Facebook business and are posting regularly with reasonable engagement, it might be a good time to start selling your products on there too. Starting a Facebook shop is easy. Simply head to Settings from the top right hand corner of your page.
Select the templates and tabs section.
Scroll down until you can see the “add a tab” button.
Select “add tab” next to Shop.
On returning to your company page, you will see the Shop tab appear. This is now visible to people viewing your page, including potential customers.
Clicking into the Shop tab, Facebook will ask you to agree to the Seller’s Terms and Policies.
After this, you will select your checkout method. If you’re a small retailer, you may wish to choose “Message to Buy”. This is a highly personal method of guiding customers to complete a purchase. They’ll ask you about your product and you’ll informally arrange how they’ll pay and receive the product in a way you’ll be familiar with if you’ve used Facebook marketplace or an “items for sale” Facebook group. In this way, you’ll likely develop a strong relationship with your customers as you chat one to one.
If you’re a larger retailer, this messaging method may not be practical for you. Will you be able to keep a track of all your orders? How will this be a smooth enough user experience? Will you be able to reply to customers as soon as they enquire? If you have an eCommerce website that you already use for sales, it’s probably best to choose this option. You’ll be able to drive traffic to your online store without worrying about managing orders through messages.
After you’ve clicked continue, you’ll be ready to start adding your products. Add the name, price, and description of each product in a few clicks. Don’t forget to take the best quality photos you can to make the best first impression. Use a style that fits with your brand and take them in plenty of light. Facebook recommends using at least three images per product.
If you sell a large number of products, you may eventually wish to import your whole inventory via a spreadsheet or database file. Facebook provides guidance on this here: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/manage-inventory-with-catalogs
Please note that purchases cannot be made directly in Facebook shops for UK businesses. This is only available to vendors using US dollars. You must either direct customers to your physical store, your website or eCommerce platform by selecting this option in set up as above, or syncing with a partner site like Shopify.
Syncing your Facebook Shop with Shopify
Many businesses, especially those which are small and independently run, choose to use a platform like Shopify to sell their products online. If you are already one of their users, then the process for setting up your Facebook shop is very simple.
Under your admin section on Shopify, head to Sales Channels. You will find the option to connect Facebook Shop as an online store. To do this, you will need to login to Facebook through Shopify using your usual login details. In may take a couple of days before the connection is confirmed.
When your Shopify profile and Facebook page are connected, you’ll be able to make your product collections on Shopify available to your Facebook Shop. They should then smoothly pull through to Facebook Shop complete with the images and information you originally added.
Other ecommerce platforms including BigCommerce, Quipt and Salsify.
Setting up your Facebook Shop in this way means you only have to manage orders in one place rather than coordinate separately on two different platforms which may get confusing. Customers will also be seamlessly directed to pay through Shopify. This may reduce them dropping out of purchasing if you don’t reply immediately to their messages or the payment process is not simple enough.
If you would like support to set up your Facebook or Instagram shop then please get in touch 01904 863511.
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