Facebook/Instagram Shops

More than 550 million Instagram users are on the platform daily, and 60% of them follow at least one business.

As Instagram continues to push deeper into eCommerce with frequent updates to the Instagram Shop and a checkout button, eCommerce stores need to keep up or risk falling behind.

Additionally, Facebook recently announced a new feature that allows you to showcase your store products on Facebook Live, taking your marketing strategy to a whole new level!

Adding your eCommerce store to your social media shops can be done in under two minutes, and while it's not necessary to have items in your store, adding one can help you envision what your store will look like in the Facebook and Instagram shops.

To obtain your Facebook store URL, go to your page builder. If you're unable to locate your URL, you'll have to add your Facebook pixel code first, which will then generate the URL for your Facebook store.

It will generate it in this structure: www.YOURDOMAIN.com/product_feed

To set up your Facebook commerce manager, you'll need a Facebook business page where you can add your eCommerce items. You can access the Facebook commerce manager by going to this link. Once you're on the commerce manager dashboard, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Data Sources tab

2. Click the 'Add items' button located in the top right corner of the dashboard.

Once you've accessed the Data Sources tab and clicked on the "Add items" button, you will be prompted to choose how you want to add your eCommerce store to Facebook.

It is recommended to select "Use Bulk Upload" even if you only have one product.

This section is where you will enter the Facebook product feed URL that you obtained earlier, as described at the beginning of this article.

To keep your catalog accurate for your ads and sales channels, it's crucial to plan your update schedule.

If your inventory changes often and you use data feeds to update your catalog, scheduling automatic uploads is recommended.

With scheduled data feed uploads, you can:

• Set the frequency of updates to hourly, daily, or weekly. Your item information will be fetched from your file URL and your catalog will be updated at the specified times automatically.

• Enable automatic uploads for new versions whenever your file has changed, even more frequently than your regular schedule. This extra option can supplement your regular schedule.

To complete the store set up, add a name to your data source. This can be anything 'Make it obvious for you to remember if handling multiple stores'

Then finally select your store currency. Your currency option should be set to the Country currency you operate in.

To finalize the setup of your store, give a name to your data source. You can choose any name that is easy for you to remember, especially if you are managing multiple stores.

After that, select the currency for your store. Make sure to set your currency option to the currency of the country where your business operates.

Create collections to customize your shop and attract customers. You’ll go to Commerce Manager to customize your shop and to create, arrange, and customize your collections.

To attract customers and customize your shop, create collections. Commerce Manager is where you can go to customize and create collections by arranging and customizing them with a name, description, cover media, and at least two or more products.

Organizing products into collections allows you to theme them so that customers can easily find the right products.

By showcasing your brand and products in a native mobile experience, shops enable customers to find them through the Facebook or Instagram App on Apple or Android devices.

Your collections will be displayed to customers as personalized products in a full-screen immersive experience.

Adding new inventory to your shop will notify customers to visit your shop, which can be found in their News Feed, on the Facebook Shop tab, or through notifications.

Shops offer a unified presence on Facebook and Instagram with unified shop customization features.

This means that if you have a shop that is accessible from both your Instagram Profile and Facebook Page, then your collections may be visible on both platforms.