Setting up a Facebook shop means you can sell merchandise without the hassle of designing and paying for a website.
Remember the pandemic when everyone stayed inside for two years and became addicted to online shopping? In 2020, online shopping and ecommerce grew by 3.4%, and ecommerce sales are now predicted to grow from $792 billion in 2020 to $1.6 trillion in 2025 as shoppers look to continue the upwards trend of shopping online. Facebook Shops have a big part to play in all that.
Meta launched Facebook Shops in May 2020 and positioned the online shopping platform as a resource to help small businesses sell online. Good timing, much?
A Facebook Shop is an online store that lives on Facebook and Instagram and allows users to browse, shop, and make purchases either directly on Facebook or by clicking through to a company’s website to complete the sale.
Facebook and Instagram users can find businesses on Facebook Shop via a Facebook page or an Instagram profile.
What’s cool about Facebook Shops is that the feature is discoverable organically or through ads, meaning there are lots of opportunities for social media marketers to optimize businesses for both channels.
There are many benefits for businesses of any size to hop on board the Facebook Shops train. Here are a few of our favorites.
Facebook Shops is a one-stop shopping experience for your customers for direct-to-consumers brands. They can engage with your business through Facebook Messenger, be directed to a relevant product, and then checkout directly on Facebook.
This provides a seamless shopping experience. There’s no need to direct a customer to an external website where it’s easier for them to get distracted and decide not to purchase.
If you have an ecommerce website for your business, you’ll understand how complicated cataloging can be. However, with Facebook Shops, storing product information and updating it is super easy. Whenever you need to make changes to your product information — for example, images, descriptions, price, etc. — simply navigate to the Commerce Manager and update your items in minutes.
An example of a Rapha product on their Facebook Shop page. Source: Facebook
Anything to do with shipping is a pain. We get it.
Luckily, Facebook Shops keeps things super simple by offering the seller (that’s you!) an opportunity to use whichever shipping method you prefer, just as long as it offers tracking and delivery confirmation.
If you need to customize the details of a shipment, head to the Commerce Manager to edit shipping details, including shipping price, speed, and destination.
With almost 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a hive of activity, with hundreds of thousands of people worldwide browsing the platform at any given time. By running Facebook ads for your products and Facebook Shop page, you’re instantly exposing your business to a new audience and potential customers while driving conversions for your store.
The ability to chat with a brand and resolve my complaint without leaving the couch? Sign me up!
Facebook Shops gives customers the ability to engage with a business through Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram to help answer questions, track orders, or settle customer queries. Just like a traditional brick and mortar store.
Pro tip: if you’re an e-commerce store that uses Facebook Messenger or any of its related apps for communicating with customers, you can save yourself hours of work a week by using an AI-powered customer service chatbot like Heyday.
This might come as a surprise, but not every online commerce business needs a website. By using Facebook Shops, businesses can eliminate the need for a website because customers can have the exact same shopping experience natively within the Facebook Shop platform.
Think of the money and time you spend on developers and hosting and all the other expenses involved in running a website. It adds up!
1. Head to facebook.com/commerce_manager to get started, and click Next
2. Select the customer checkout method. You’ll notice you can select one of the following options:
a. Checkout on another website (direct your audience to a domain you own)
b. Checkout with Facebook or Instagram (customers will be able to pay for their product within the Facebook or Instagram platform)
c. Checkout with messaging (direct your customers to a Messenger conversation)
Note that the ability to checkout directly on a Meta-owned platform using Shop Pay is only available in the US.
3. Select the Facebook page you want to sell from. If you don’t have a Facebook page for your business established, this is the time to set one up. Click next.
4. Connect your Facebook business account. Set one up if you don’t have one. Click next.
5. Choose where you deliver your products to. Click next.
6. Preview your Facebook Shop and ensure that all the information is correct, then click Finish Setup
To start selling products on Facebook Shop, there are a few requirements that businesses need to fulfill. According to Meta, these include:
No matter how big or small, businesses can feature products from their catalog and customize their Facebook Shop to match their brand colors and style.
Adding products to your Facebook Shop is an easy, step-by-step process that ensures that customers receive all the information they need to make a purchase.
Where your products are stored is called a catalog, and you can connect your catalog to different ads and sales channels to promote your items.
To make your first catalog, follow these steps:
3. Select the catalog type that best represents your business, then click Next.
4. Choose how you want to upload your catalog. Facebook Shops gives you two options: manually upload or connect your catalog from a partner platform, e.g., Shopify or BigCommerce.
5. Name your catalog with an appropriate name, then click Create.
6. Add items to your catalog by clicking Items in the right-hand navigation bar, then select Add Items.
7. The next screen allows you to input all of your item information, including images, title, product description, website URL to make a purchase, price, and condition.
In the example above, we’ve shown you the manual way to upload items into your Facebook Shop. But, it’s worth researching the different ways to upload items to a Facebook Shop, as for larger businesses, a Facebook Pixel or Data feed might be more appropriate.
Product collections give you an opportunity to showcase your products in a new light. For example, a spring collection, a vacation collection, or a new mom’s collection—depending on the products you actually offer on Facebook Shops.
Collections can be featured on the main page of your Facebook Shop and give visitors a chance to browse more specific items that have been grouped together.
Pro tip: If you use Shopify to run your ecommerce store, you can integrate your products directly without manually uploading each item.
Fashion brand Everlane features their latest arrivals collection at the top of their Facebook Shop. Source: Facebook.
What? You expected Meta to let you run a shop on their platform for free? Facebook’s gotta make their money somehow, and Facebook Shop fees give Meta a small cut of your sales. Luckily, the selling fees aren’t extortionate. Let’s break ‘em down:
Cycling brand Rapha do a brilliant job with their Facebook Shop. We especially love the collections they’ve built and the ease of navigation in the top nav bar.
Tentree follows a similar strategy to Rapha, emphasizing easy-to-browse collections and simple, engaging titles for their products.
Popular makeup megastore, Sephora, has used eye-catching visuals on some of its images to make discounted products stand out on the Facebook Main page.
However you decide to set up and start selling online with a Facebook Shop, you know that Hootsuite is here for you every step of the day. Sign up for a 30-day free trial and see how we can help you grow your new storefront, today.
Lululemon keeps things clean, clear, and direct on their item listings. Using clear visuals, the focus is on the product (not what’s going on around it) which should help drive sales.
Feeling confident that launching a Facebook Shop is the next step in your ecommerce journey? Hootsuite lets you manage all your social media channels in one tidy dashboard, giving you more time to focus on the other areas of scaling your business (like writing up those pesky product item descriptions!) Join now for a 30-day free trial.
