Facebook Shop: The 2nd quarter game changer

A new form of shopping experience for worldwide “New Normal”

The worldwide pandemic gives a threat to humanity physically, mentally, and economically. Physical storefronts and office-based companies were forced to close temporarily to prevent the spreading of the virus. Millions of people are losing their jobs and businesses are losing large sums of profit.

In the middle of the 2nd quarter, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook Inc., announced the launch of their new product called Facebook shop. Both businesses and buyers will benefit from this new feature since it provides convenient shopping and selling experience–truly a game-changer during this crisis.

As the time spent on the internet boosts up, it’s an opportunity for small businesses to market digitally especially on Facebook which hit 2.6 billion active users on Q1 of 2020 based on the data of statistica.com.

On Mark’s announcement, he mentioned that they accelerated the launching of Facebook Shop to help small or startup businesses during this hard time by allowing them to sell their products directly on Facebook and improve the end-to-end buyer’s experience. What is best about this shop is it’s free and easy to manage.

The Facebook Shop is accessible both on the platform itself and Instagram though you have to set it up on the page first. Integrating the shop makes it convenient for buyers since they don’t need to switch apps whenever they are ready to purchase–all transactions from placing orders to payments can be made on Facebook Shop.

How it works

Currently, the Facebook shop is only available to selected Facebook pages and Instagram profiles.  If you have an existing shop or the first version of this, it will automatically convert to the new shop if you are eligible. You’ll know if you are qualified if you receive an email or notification about it.

You can use Commerce Manager to create customized collections to give more options to your customers. You can save 6-30 products on each collection which you can add name, description, and cover media. You can create different collections with a variety of themes to help your customers find the right product for them easily.

The Shop is a mobile-first feature so the customer will have a full-screen experience when using mobile devices. It also has a unified presence–meaning your collection can be viewed on all Facebook’s family of apps.

How to set up Facebook shops

Step 1: Go to your Facebook Page and configure your Shop. Make sure that your page template is set to Shopping. If your page doesn’t use this template yet, you can go to the page settings, then click the Template and Tabs menu. Click the Edit button to select a new template and choose Shopping.

 

 

Step 2: Click the Shop tab on the left menu of your screen to start configuring your shop.

 

 

Step 3: A pop-up window will appear–click the Get Started button.

 

 

Once you get there, you’ll know if your page is qualified to proceed. We will post another article about this for a step by step guide.

 

 

If you have the Get Started message then let’s continue to the next step.

Step 4: Complete all the forms and follow the instructions.
First, you have to set up where your store is located, and the currency of your shop.

Then, add the type of product you are selling.

And your tax and business information.

Lastly, select the shipping options and the return policy of your shop.

Step 5: Click Finish then you’re done. You can now proceed adding products.

Adding your products

Step 1: Click the Add Product and a pop-up window will appear. Add the image of your product and complete the form.

 

 

You can put your product on sale by turning on The product is on sale toggle switch, then add the sale price.

Step 2: You can set the visibility of your product to Public or Unpublish–if you want to add all your products first before going live. You can also choose the condition of your product. e.g new or used.

Step 3: Click Add Product button then you’re done. If you choose to display it publicly, it will appear on the Home page.

Future plans

Mark mentioned that they are working on making the Shop available on Messenger and Whatsapp too. They are also working with their partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Channel Advisor, CedCommerce, Cafe24, Tienda Nube, and Feedonomics so that small businesses can easily integrate their store to Facebook shop. They are also looking to explore using AI and AR too!

Facebook is continuously innovating and finding ways to help businesses and customers get the best online shopping and selling experience they can offer.

Sources:

Announcement post: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111930156208121

Live video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=external&v=10111929914173161 Blog:https://www.facebook.com/33cc1e07-6251-4fae-a638-2bf13833fda1https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2343035149322466?id=1077620002609475

https://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-selling-advice/how-to-create-a-facebook-shop-page

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