Why to sell on Facebook?
With over a billion active users, Facebook offers a great opportunity for selling products worldwide. You have many options to target even a small percentage of these users that can help you generate huge sales volume. Being an e-commerce entrepreneur, Facebook is a place you can’t afford to ignore.
Facebook is an excellent lead generation tool as people are more likely to engage with your brand. But, online sellers should not rely solely on Facebook to acquire new customers and use it as an additional sales channel to increase the number of repeat customers.
Customers can easily shop by selecting products and by making payments right on your FB page.
If your store ships to USA and allows customers to pay in US dollars, customers can checkout without leaving Facebook. Customers from other countries will have options to either leave a message or go to your website linked to your Facebook page.
There are great SAAS platforms that charge monthly subscription fee and enable you to open a fully integrated online store on FB. Here, we will discuss about world’s two best resources – Ecwid and Shopify.
These resources can help you sell products on Facebook with ease. You don’t even need to have a fully functional website or online store to sell on Facebook using Ecwid and Shopify.
A free starter site on Ecwid and a store on Shopify with just one product will be enough. When you make any changes on your website, these changes will be visible on Facebook store as well.
But opening shop is not enough, you need to promote it in different ways on Facebook itself. If you feel it’s a lot of work, You can hire experts on Fiverr, a leading global marketplace for buying/selling services. You can hire expert freelancers at a low price starting$5.
First requirement to open your online store is a business page on Facebook, which is different from your profile.
Follow these steps to create a page to sell on Facebook:
- Login to your FB account. Click on ‘Create a Page’. You will see the following options. As you want to open online store, choose ‘Brand or Product’ as your page type.
Once you click on ‘Brand or Product’. you will see this:
As you can see, choose a product category (you will see options by clicking on drop down arrow). Also, enter your page name under ‘Brand or Product Name‘. Press ‘Get started‘ button. That’s it. You just created your page.
For example, I chose the name of my page as ‘Ladies Suits’ under clothing category.
Using Shopify to sell on Facebook
Shopify is the world’s best and most preferred SAAS platform to open an online store. It offers amazing features that can help you take your business to any level you want.
You need to sign up for a 14-day free trial at Shopify.
After creating account on Shopify, login and upload at least one product. After this, you need to add Facebook Sales Channel in Shopify by following these simple steps:
- Go to Shopify admin and click (+) sign next to ‘Sales Channels’.
- Once the ‘Add sales channel’ dialog box opens, click on Facebook Add button .
After adding sales channel, all you need to do is to connect your Facebook page account to Shopify by using a simple command. After verification by Facebook, which may take up to 48 hours, you are ready to sell on your Facebook page.
Using Ecwid to sell on Facebook
Another great and popular service provider, Ecwid helps you create a free ‘starter site’ for directing visitors from Facebook to this site.
You can list less than 10 products on this free starter site which is good for beginners. Once your business starts growing, you can list more products by choosing premium (paid) plans.
After creating starter site, you need to integrate Ecwid app to your Facebook page. There are two ways you can do this:
1. Login to your account on Ecwid control panel. Follow instructions to add your store to Facebook and Ecwid will do it for you. That’s it.
2. Alternatively you can open this page on Facebook. You will see this.
After installing the App, connect your Ecwid account to FB app. Now you will be able to share your online store (starter site you created on Ecwid) on Facebook.
Happy Selling!