Selling on Facebook

Facebook commerce is gaining in popularity, and merchants and businesses should take full advantage of this by ensuring that they are able to market their goods and services on Facebook easily.

The Online Store app is the leading shopping cart application on Facebook, empowering more than 40,000 Facebook stores globally to sell their products on the world’s largest social media platform. On average, the seller notes a 15% increase in revenue by adding a shop to their Facebook page. And since Facebook now has its own shopping cart and checkout, your customers can place orders without leaving their Facebook account.

The Online Store makes it easy to add your store to your Facebook page without changing any settings of your pages or post anything there. When you connect your online store to Facebook, the social platform will create a mobile-friendly Shop section on your Facebook business page that displays your products. Customers can access your shop using desktop and mobile devices, including the Facebook mobile app. Once connected, the Online Store app will automatically sync your product information and will update it twice a day.

These are the requirements to meet before connecting your store to Facebook:

• You have a Facebook business page and it has been published
• You are the admin of that page
• Your store currency is supported by Facebook. Here’s a list of currencies that can be used for making payments on Facebook.
• Your products comply with Facebook Commerce policies.

If you do not have a Facebook page for your business yet, you can create it following these instructions. Make yourself familiar with guidelines to product listings in your shop.

Here’s a guide on how to connect your store and start selling on Facebook.

Connecting your online store to Facebook

1. Go to the Sales Channel section, and click Facebook.
2. At the next screen, you will be prompted to click on the blue button to start connecting your store to Facebook. Click the + Connect Facebook Page button to proceed:

1. Enter your Facebook page login details.
2. If the login details are entered correctly, you will be asked to confirm that you allow Online Store to manage Pages and manage Call to Actions. Press OK in the lower right corner of your screen.
3. Once Facebook processes your data, you should receive a confirmation message. Click Review your Facebook store.

Customizing your Facebook store page

1. You will be taken to the Facebook store admin area where you have options to see the status of your shop (make sure it’s showing as Connected), and manage Settings of your store. Click on Settings.
   
   
2.  In Settings, you have the following options:

• Hide or show Categories menu widgets. If you do not have many products in your store, choose Hide.
• Hide or show the Search box widget. Choose Show if your inventory is large and choose Hide if your inventory is small at the moment.
• Control how your products are displayed on the Shop page. You can opt for Grid, List, or Table. Choose the layout depends on your product photography. If your products are photographed on the white background then a Grid or Table view will work best for them. List option is best for lifestyle photography.

3.  At the bottom of the Settings page, you will have an option to enter a script or HTML code in a window. This is useful to add Facebook Pixel code in order to leave a cookie in customer’s devices and use it in your marketing campaigns such as retargeting. For more information on Facebook Pixel and its uses in online marketing read this guide.
   
   
4. Once done with customizing your Facebook Store, click Save.

Managing your products on Facebook Shop

1. The Online Store will upload all products to Facebook Shop automatically and will update the catalog twice a day.

Note: Only the products in your catalog that have been enabled will be uploaded.  Make sure that your product has been marked as Enabled in the catalog.

2. You can enable the product and manage the stock remaining in the General section of your product page.
   
   
3. Products will be categorized by Facebook automatically in the following way:

• Products that are featured on your store’s front page will appear in the Featured section in the Facebook Shop.
• Products in the root category of your catalog will appear as a Collection with the same name in the Facebook Shop. For example, the Travel Candles and Aroma Diffusers categories will become Travel Candles and Aroma Diffusers Collections on Facebook.  
• Subcategories (including child subcategories) will appear as separate Collections on Facebook.

4. Product variations such as size and color variants will be uploaded to the Facebook Shop with the matching attributes.

Note: If the product has at least one variation set to Any, it will be uploaded to the Facebook Shop without variations. You can manage product variations in the Options section of your product page.

5. Facebook controls the position of the Shop button on your Facebook Page but you can encourage visitors to interact with your store by setting up the Contact Us button. Click Add a Button on your Page, then choose Contact Us where you can enter your store URL. Alternatively, you can add your email address. Click Save. 

How the Facebook Shop works

1. Your customers will browse your products directly in the Shop section of your Facebook page – even when using Facebook’s mobile app – and use Facebook’s own shopping cart. To place the item in the shopping cart the customer should click the Add to Bag button.
   
   
2. The customer can opt to Add More products to the shopping cart or proceed to the checkout by pressing Go to Checkout.
   
   
3. On the next page in the Shopping Cart section the customer can do the following:

• Browse the products in the order
• Verify the estimated shipping
• Click Continue Shopping to add more products to their shopping cart.

In the Checkout section of the page the customer can:

• Verify their email address that will be used to receive order updates
• Choose Facebook Checkout (black) or a PayPal Checkout depending on the payment options enabled in your online store.

5. At the Shipping Information page, the customer enters the shipping address for their order. Next, she should choose the delivery method which you have set in your online store.  After entering the information, the customer should press the Continue button.
   
   
6. At the next Payment Details page, the customer chooses the payment method from the payment methods that you have enabled in your online store as well as their billing address. They can tick the option My billing address is the same as shipping if this applies to them. After completing this section, the customer should press the Continue button.
   
   
7. At the next Checkout page, the customer can review the contact information, billing address, order quantity and press Place Order button.
   
   
8. Once the order has been placed and the customer receives the confirmation sent to their email address associated with their Facebook account. 
9. Online Store notifies you about the order by email. The order becomes visible in the My Sales > Orders section.  Click on the Order and process it according to your existing business process.

9. Once you have clicked Mark as Shipped, the customer receives the update of the order status. Just like with regular sales, you receive a copy of their confirmation email.

You can also browse helpful articles about how to manage Facebook Shops in the Facebook resources section.