How to Setup a Facebook Store from Scratch

With holiday shopping season nearby, now is perhaps the best time to start a Facebook Store. It allows businesses to open online shops where they can “show and sell” their products to Facebook's nearly 3 billion monthly active users.

80 million other SMBs are also on Facebook, 25 million of them are active advertisers. With a Facebook Store, you can join this league, more so, because SalesForce has predicted a 15% y-o-y increase in holiday e-commerce sales this year.

Therefore, setting up a Facebook Store is a no-brainer. What's more, with zero dollars and a few clicks you can be up and running. In this post, I'll show you how to set up a Facebook Shop, how to choose the right products to sell, plus how to land your first sale, but first.

What is a Facebook Store?

Just like a Shopify store, a Facebook Store allows you sell physical items online, only in this case, Facebook hosts your online store for you. This means you do not have to worry about domain name registration,  hosting, updates, security. All you need is a Facebook Business Page, and at least a physical product.

According to Facebook, “this feature best serves merchants, retail and e-commerce advertisers. We recommend it for businesses selling apparel, accessories (including bags and luggage), home furnishings and baby or kids' products.”

Following are 9 Steps to Create a Facebook Store

Step 1: Navigate to Shop

Navigate to your Facebook Page and click on the “shop” option as shown below.

Step 2: Set Up Your Shop Section

To set up your shop section, you have to first agree to the Merchant Terms and Policies which cover product listing, deliveries, returns, disputes, handling of user data, etc.

Step 3: Select Checkout Method

Here, you can choose how you want visitors to buy products, either by messaging you or by clicking a link that redirects them to your website or online store.

Keep in mind that most customers may prefer to pay on Facebook to paying on a “less trusted site.”

Step 4: Turn on Messaging

Turn on messaging if you chose it as your preferred checkout method.

Step 5: Add a Cover

Here’s your chance to really catch people’s attention. Add a beautiful cover which can be a photo, video or slideshow.

Step 6: Add CTA Button

After adding a cover, you should add a call-to-action button e.g “call now ” or “shop now.” This is customizable.

Step 7: Add Product

Here you can add product photos or videos to your shop. This can only be done on a computer. There are certain important guidelines to be followed here, e.g, images must be square and have a resolution of 1024 x 1024 or higher.

Thereafter, you will need to add product name, price, description, checkout URL, then set visibility and select condition, whether new or used.

Step 8: Confirmatory Message

You will get the following confirmatory message showing you’ve successfully added your first product to your Facebook Shop.

You can add multiple products to your store, as many as you want.

Step 9: Storefront

Here’s what this Facebook storefront looks like after completion.

Once done, you can start promoting your Facebook Shop.

Following are proven tips showing

How to Sell on Facebook

Now that you have set up your Facebook Store, we'll look at how to sell on Facebook. There are many ways to do this, including:

1. Brand Positioning:
   Use your brand assets including logos, motto, colors, etc to aid recognition and recall.
2. Audience Research:
   Identify your target customers who may be more interested in the products you have to sell. If you sell baby products, you can target mothers-to-be.
3. Build an Audience:
   Brands who have an audience already find it easier to sell on Facebook. Focus on building an interested and loyal audience by posting relevant, informative, engaging and high-quality content. This builds trust and facilitates sales.
4. Post Regularly:
   Creating engaging content can be time-consuming. With a good team or a content calendar in place, you can create high-quality content on a regular basis. By constantly sharing, you will keep your Page’s timeline active.
5. Paid Ads:
   This is one of the best ways to sell on Facebook. Facebook Ads can be highly-targeted at specific customer demographics, increasing reach, visibility, and conversion. When cross-promoted to Instagram, it can also help you grow sales and following.
6. Try Influencers:
   With the right influencers showcasing and promoting your products or store, you can gain new customers and business quickly. This strategy has worked for many brands.
7. Respond Quickly:
   After creating publicity around your products or Facebook Shop, you need to respond quickly, especially if you selected messaging as your checkout method. If not, you’ll lose customers due to poor customer service.
8. Update Stock:
   Constantly update your stock and remove out-of-stock items. This way you eliminate disappointment and show customers that you mean business.
9. Collect and Display Reviews, Ratings, Testimonials:
   91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as friends and family recommendations. Positive reviews, ratings, and testimonials will convince new customers that you’re worth doing business with.

How to Choose the Right Product to Sell on Facebook Store

Here's how to choose the right product to sell in your Facebook Store.

1. Study Facebook Prohibition List:
   Study the Facebook Prohibited Content list, and stay away from prohibited items.
2. Conduct Market Research:
   Conduct market research to learn if there’s a market for your products before you create a shop and start spending money on ads and marketing.
3. Study Trends:

Popular e-commerce platforms/marketplaces like Shopify, AliExpress, Alibaba, are great places to identify what sells or what is selling. Watch out for products with high orders.

4. Study Other Facebook Stores:
   By studying other Facebook Shops, you gain insight into what is selling on Facebook. This could be your competitors or even shops from other niches.
5. Read Facebook Shop Reviews:
   Customers bare their minds in reviews. Part of what you can learn from them are which products they’ve derived the most utility from.

How to Get the First Sale on Facebook

After you have identified the right products to list and sell, here's how to land your first Facebook Store order.

1. (Cross) Promote Your Shop:
   Without promotion, few people will know about your Facebook Shop. By publicizing and cross-promoting your store you get more visibility across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Audience Network and Marketplace.
2. Ask Friends and Family to Like and Share:
   Another way to get the word out and land your first sale is by asking friends and family to like, share and shop with you. This might be your best bet because they already know and trust you.
3. Offer a Discount:

By offering a discount to first responders, you make it easier to attract first time buyers. Plan this to avoid incurring huge losses. Also seek out ways to channel such new customers into your sales funnel using lists, etc.

4. Offer BOGOF:

You can also land your first sale using buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) offers. Shoppers love "free", even if it actually means reduced fee.

5. Throw an Online Opening Party:

You can also organize an official Store Opening party where you sell products at a discount. You can use Facebook Live or organize a Facebook Watch Party.

6. Self-Order:

This may not count as much, but it still counts. By placing an order yourself, you show you have faith in your product, plus your stats read "1 sold."

7. Be Customer #1 Posts:

You can share posts stating that you've just opened your Facebook Shop and that there's a reward for the first customer to place an order. You can offer to make them the face of your brand for a month.

8. Donate to Charity:

People love to give to causes they care about. By donating a portion of sales or proceeds to charity, you can get a lot of people to shop with you.

9. Use clear CTA:

By using clear calls-to-action, you make it clearer and easier for customers to take action. CTAs like call now, buy now, or shop now, will clearly tell visitors what you expect of them.

Conclusion

By setting up a Facebook Shop, you can learn about how to run an online shop. Should you decide to migrate to other more robust e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, etc, these lessons will still prove invaluable.

In this post, we have covered what is a Facebook Store, how to set up a Facebook Shop, how to sell on Facebook, how to choose the right product to sell on Facebook, and how to get your first sale on Facebook.

Let us know how this has helped you in creating your Facebook Store.