How to add your store inventory to Facebook and Instagram Shops
Get more sales by adding your eCommerce store items to your social media shops in just a few minutes. Facebook and Instagram marketing is essential to eCommerce businesses. Not using social media to promote your products would be crazy!
Especially when you consider that more than 500 million Instagram users use the platform daily and 50% of them follow at least one business. Plus, Instagram is pushing harder moving deeper into eCommerce.
Whether it’s the constant Instagram Shop updates or the introduction of a checkout button, it’s clear that eCommerce stores must keep up or risk being left behind.
And, with Facebook just announcing being able to inject your store products to Facebook live takes it to a whole new level!
Read on to find out how to add your eCommerce store in less than 2 minutes.
You don't require to have any items in your eCommerce store to get started, but adding one will help you visualise what your store will look like in your Facebook and Instagram shop.
Important
Be sure to read Facebooks eCommerce policy here
First you will need to head over to your page builder to get your Facebook store url.
'If you cannot see your URL, you will need to add your Facebook pixel code first' that will then generate you the Facebook store url.
e.g www.yourwebsite.com/product_feed
Setting up your Facebook commerce manager
You will need a Facebook business page to add your eCommerce items too.
Head over to Facebook commerce manager here
Once you are in the commerce managers dashboard 'as shown below' follow the next steps:
Go to the Data Sources tab and select 'Add items' button to the top right of the dashboard.
Upload options
Next you will be asked how you want to add your eCommerce store to Facebook. Select (Use Bulk Upload) as highlighted below. Even if you only have 1 product be sure to use this method too.
Set up feed
This section is where you add your Facebook product feed url as show at the start of this article.
Note: You will need to prefix your url with https://
Once you have added your Url correctly you can then select whether you require to save login details. (If your data feed is password protected)
Most often than not, general eCommerce stores leave this blank.
Now click next.
Schedule updates
Plan your update schedule. It's important to keep your catalog updated so that correct item information appears in your ads and sales channels. If you use data feeds to update your catalog and your inventory changes frequently, we recommend that you schedule automatic uploads.
With scheduled data feed uploads, you can:
- Schedule updates hourly, daily or weekly. We'll fetch the item information from your file URL and update your catalog automatically at the times you specify.
- Choose to automatically upload new versions even more frequently, whenever we detect that your file has changed. You can enable this extra option to supplement your regular schedule.
Complete settings
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.
Visit your new shop
Congratulations! You've now added your eCommerce store to your Facebook shop. Note, it can take a little while longer for Instagram to verify your store if just getting started out. While Facebook is instant.
How shops work
Create collections to customise your shop and attract customers. You’ll go to Commerce Manager to customise your shop and to create, arrange, and customise your collections.
Each collection will have a name, description, cover media and include at least 2 or more products. You can organise products into collections with a variety of themes that can help your customers find products that are right for them.
Shops showcase your brand and products in a native mobile experience. After publishing your shop, customers will be able to find it through the Facebook or Instagram App on Apple or Android devices. Your shop will be viewed in a full screen immersive experience and your collections will be shown as personalised products to customers.
When you add new inventory to your shop, people can see it in their News Feed, on the Facebook Shop tab, or get a notification to encourage them visit your shop.
Shops provide a unified presence on Facebook and Instagram. Shop customisation features are unified across the family of apps. This means that if you have a shop that is accessible from both your Instagram Profile and your Facebook Page, then your collections may be visible on both Instagram and Facebook.