Facebook Stores: A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up
When selling products online, getting them onto a platform that already has an existing user base can be a key strategy in getting your sales off the ground. And with over 1.5 billion users across the globe, selling on Facebook can be a great option.
While the Facebook store feature might not be available to you right now, you’ll find out in this guide how to set it up (starting right from the beginning for those unfamiliar with Facebook), and what you need to know.
Note: If you already have your Facebook page set up and are just here to find out how to set up your Facebook Shop tab, you might want to skip ahead.
The Basics: Setting up a Facebook Page
Thanks to that incredibly huge user base, Facebook is seen as one of the essential social networks for any business, ecommerce or not, to have under their belt.
However, despite their large user base, not everyone is fully up to grips with how to get the most out of Facebook. That’s why I thought I’d take the time today to walk through creating a page for your business.
Setting up a Facebook page is super simple, just follow these 4 steps and then you’re on your way to getting setup with a Facebook Shop.
1. Use a Personal Profile to set up a page
You can only create a Facebook page if you’ve already got a personal profile. If you don’t have one of those, you simply need to sign up to Facebook and follow the steps.
Once you’ve done that simply head to facebook.com/pages/create.
2. Choose your business category
Next you need to choose a business category that accurately represents your business:
- Local Business or Place
- Company, Organisation or Institution
- Brand or Product
- Artist, Band or Public Figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or Community
Don’t worry too much if you think you’ve chosen the wrong one, you can change this after you’ve created the page.
3. Industry specific category
After choosing your industry, you’ll also be asked to choose the Industry-specific category that relates to your business. You can see a full list of each category available for each industry below!
After choosing one of these you’ll need to fill out your name and agree to the Facebook Page Terms. For Local Business, you’ll also be required to fill in your address and phone number!
4. Complete details
The final step in getting your page set up is completing your details, from the About section to contact details; whatever’s relevant, you can see all the fields available to each category in the table above.
You’ll also need to upload your profile picture and cover photo, with the recommended size being 180 x 180px and 851 x 315px respectively. Make sure your photos are high quality, Omnicore recommend that you upload an image 2x the recommended size so that you don’t lose quality when the image is compressed.
When adding all these details, ensure you’re making it absolutely clear what your page is about, so that users know they have the right one!
Now it’s time to focus on adding content to your page. Plan what kind of content you’ll be publishing and how you’re going to attract people to your page to like it. Blogs such as Buffer and SumoMe have some great tips on how to do just that.
Your next step is to start selling on Facebook…
Setting up a Facebook Store
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the shop feature may not be available to all pages just yet. You can check if it’s available to you by looking at your Page; along from the tabs Timeline, About, etc you should see a link that says ‘Add a Section’.
There are several ways to set up the shop, by using Shopify or BigCommerce or directly via Facebook. I’ll talk you through each step below.
Note: before creating your shop (whichever way you do it), it is absolutely essential that you read the Merchant Terms & Policies. Read below for more info.
Directly on Facebook
Add shop section
The first step is pretty simple – if you have that ‘Add Shop Section’ link, click it!
Terms & Conditions
Next you’ll need to read the Merchant Terms & Policies and check the box beside ‘I Agree to the merchant terms and policies’.
While most of us can count on one hand the number of times we’ve clicked I Agree to the Terms & Conditions after reading them in full, I really would take the time to read these.
Some key areas you might want to consider include:
- Testing: As the Shop feature is currently a test feature, there are some guidelines around how errors will be handled (Facebook has no obligation to fix them), and they expect you to record performance and bugs.
- Product Listings: These are governed by the Facebook Ads policies, so make sure your products are not restricted in anyway.
- Returns and Refunds: Facebook may initiate refunds or cancellations on your behalf for at least 45 days after the purchase.
- Shipping Method: Facebook has a list of shipping methods you should use; if you don’t use one of them, you’ll need prior consent from them.
Your Business Details
Add your address and email address. If you’re using a separate email address for customer support to what you’re using to set up your shop (i.e. admin@sarahsshop.co.uk for set up and the support@sarahsshop.co.uk for customer support), make sure you uncheck the ‘Use the same email address for customer service inquiries’ box.
Connect Stripe
If you have a Stripe account, connect it. If not, click Submit.
That’s it for the main setup – but what’s a shop without something to sell?
Add Products
It’s super simple to add products, simply click the Shop section, and then Add Product. Fill in all the details you need, including images, descriptions, and variants. You can see all the requirements right here but here’s the need-to-knows:
- You should have at least one image per product, and it should be an image of the product itself with a resolution of 1024 x 1024.
- Your descriptions should be Rich Text only
- You can only have 4 variants per product
Note: if you have a lot of products, it’s worth dividing them into collections. To add a collection, click the Shop section, and under the little gear icon, select Collections. Add a new collection, name it as appropriate and then select which products you want to add in. You can also hide or feature collections.
And that’s it – your shop is officially set up – all that’s left to do is manage your orders (just head to Publishing Tools > Shop to do just that!)
Create a Facebook Store via Shopify
If you’re a Shopify shop owner, it’s even simpler to setup and manage your Facebook store.
Add Facebook as A Sales Channel
Login to your Shopify store, head to Settings, Sales Channel and then click Add Facebook.
Connect Your Facebook Account
Obviously this won’t work until you’ve connected your Facebook page, so make sure you’re signed in to the right Facebook account and hit Get Started. Facebook will then verify your account info to approve your store before you can enable Facebook checkout.
Enable Shop Tab
Click ‘Enable Facebook Shop’ and you’ll then be able to determine which products and collections you want to be visible on your Facebook store. You can also change the order that collections are in.
Choose Your Checkout
Your final step is to choose which checkout to use. You’ll have two options (and if your store is eligible you can choose between them):
a. Checkout through Facebook
b. Redirect to Shopify checkout
From a customer perspective, it’s a better user experience to just checkout on Facebook as it saves you hopping from one site to another, however the choice is yours.
Once all that is done, all that’s left to do is manage your orders which you can do as you would manage the other orders within your Shopify dashboard.
Create a Facebook Store with BigCommerce
Setting up on BigCommerce is pretty similar to Shopify, it’s just a case of enabling it in the admin panel.
Enable Facebook
Head to your Channel Manager in the admin panel of your BigCommerce store and click Get Started next to Facebook.
Connect your Facebook Account
If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create a Facebook business account. Then it’s just a case of connecting your account to BigCommerce, simply by logging in.
Add Your Business Details
As you would for the direct route, you need to put in a contact email and phone number, a link to your terms of service and finally choose the Facebook page you’re connecting to.
Get Approved
Click ‘Save’, remember to read through those Facebook Terms of Service and then Accept!
From there you follow the same steps when it comes to adding products and categories as you would in the direct route. Orders are all managed within BigCommerce.
That’s all there is to it. It requires no technical skill to create a Facebook store, just a few clicks here and there and you’re good to go.
It’s another great tool to add to your arsenal when it comes to social media marketing. If it’s not available to you right now, keep an eye out for it, and in the mean time there are still other ways you can take full advantage of Facebook for your ecommerce store.