Have you set up Facebook Shop yet? Smart business owners have more than one online store, and so should you. With 2.7 billion monthly active users, spending an average of 58 minutes daily on the platform, Facebook is indeed a great place to set up shop.
Facebook offers a complete in-app shopping experience through its Shop feature. Although any business can have a shop, this feature best serves merchants, retail and e-commerce advertisers who sell apparel, accessories (including bags and luggage), home furnishings and baby or kids’ products.
In this article, you will discover what Facebook shop/store is, the importance of Facebook shop/store and finally, some Facebook shop mistakes to avoid when setting up, but first
What is Facebook Shop/Store?
A Facebook shop/store is a tab that allows you to showcase and sell your products to people and connect with more customers on Facebook via your Facebook business Page. This feature, allows potential customers to browse and purchase your products without leaving Facebook.
There are two ways you can set up a Facebook store: you can connect your third party e-commerce application like Shopify or Ecwid account to Facebook and sync your products or do it directly on Facebook.
On Facebook, after you’ve added the Shop tab to your Page, add products individually to your shop or collection. These will be reviewed and published on your Shop within 24 hours if it meets Facebook policies.
Afterwards, when people visit your Page, they can click on your Store Tab and purchase products directly. It is also important to note that you can only add products and collections to your Facebook shop from a computer.
Importance of Facebook Shop
- Facebook Shop enables you to tap into Facebook’s Social Engagement. Unlike your website, when people view your products on your Facebook store, there are reactions that follow through such as likes, comments, and shares. Each of these actions will help to expose your brand to new people in the best possible way.
- Facebook Shop also helps to reduce friction in the sales process. It makes it easy for your customers to purchase your products without leaving Facebook.
- Facebook Shop is an absolutely free way to showcase your product offerings to your audience on Facebook who can convert to paying customers.
- It also helps to increase brand awareness and boost sales and ROI.
Now, onto;
15 Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Up Facebook Shop
- Lack of a Marketing Plan
Just like you have your Facebook strategy, you should also make smart plans for your Facebook Shop. You need a plan for your policies and procedures, marketing and pricing strategies with your target market and competitors in mind.
Will you be using Facebook Ads and cross-promoting to Instagram? These and many more should form the basis of your Facebook Shop marketing Plan.
- Inadequate Product Images
Quality visuals are one of the most important aspects of your Facebook Shop. Photo and video are the first experiences a customer will have with your business and products so, making yours stand out is vital.
Create strong visual content that inspires and compels visitors to buy from you. Include about 4, high-res, white background photos of the same product that are clean and clear. Also, creatively showcase close-ups and different angles of the product and variations.
Your product pictures should have a resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels. Avoid using images that contain text (e.g., calls-to-action or promo codes) offensive content (e.g., nudity, explicit language, violence) advertising or promotional material, watermarks, time-sensitive information (e.g., limited time offers).
- Poor Product Descriptions
Informative product descriptions are customer-focused and packed with relevant details that sell your product. Your descriptions should be concise, helpful, creative, compelling and directly related to the products.
Also, highlight unique product features and benefits; this will attract customers to the products. Your descriptions should also include the size and weights of products.
- Poor “About Us” Information
Make good use of the branding opportunity that the “about us” section of your Shop offers. Write an interesting piece about your brand story and also make creative use of videos that inspire and inform your customers about your products.
Doing so will help drive meaningful sales to your Facebook Shop. It will also tell visitors exactly how and where to contact you should they desire further information or want to laya complaint.
- Lack of Adherence to Facebook Shop Guidelines
There are a few guidelines on what you can and cannot sell on Facebook. First, it has to be a physical product, not a digital product. Also, Facebook does not allow animals to be sold on its platform.
As part of FB Shop best practices, your items need to match their photos and descriptions. Also, you cannot use “before and after” photos to advertise weight loss products, and you cannot violate any trademark laws (such as using a copyrighted logo). It’s important to go through Facebook Shop guidelines so as not to violate any of their terms.
- Not Categorizing Products
When you have lots of products to feature on your Facebook Shop, it’s worth dividing them and arranging them into collections or categories. This adds a touch of class to your shop and helps your customers browse these collections easily to make their choices from your product offerings.
To add a collection, click the “Shop” section, and under the little gear button, select “Collections.” Add a new collection, name it for the product category and then select which products you want to add.
- Poor Captions
A good Facebook store needs snappy and creative captions that add to the beauty of the product photos. Take time to craft catchy product captions that differentiate similar products from each other.
You can hire copywriters to help you create great product copy and captions that best capture and project the essence of your products.
- Making Your Facebook Shop too Salesy
When planning the content of your Facebook shop, endeavour to make your content less promotional and more fun, interesting, educational and of high-value to customers.
Basically focus on the customer when designing, marketing or running your store, and they will, in turn, come running to you, credit cards in hand, begging you to take their money.
- Excluding the Prices of Products Featured
Always add product prices. Don’t make customers have to contact you and wait hours or days to know product prices when there are many other stores waiting to snatch them from you.
Displaying product prices will help you filter buyers, and bring you only those who can afford to pay. This will save you the time you’d otherwise spend responding to buyers who cannot afford your products.
- Use of Misleading Product Images from the Internet.
Avoid downloading stock images from the internet and passing them off as your product photos. This makes people who have come across such pictures lose trust in your products.
This can also increase returns if delivered products differ greatly from that advertised online. Invest time and money into creating your own product photos, and you can do it on a budget, even on your smartphone. This boosts brand credibility and trust in your products.
- Poor Customer Service
From replying comments on your products to answering questions about them and having a return policy for bad products, your customer service is a determinant of how far your e-commerce business can go and should be taken very seriously.
Customer experience will be the leading brand differentiator by 2020, reports say. Successful online stores know and use the power of great customer service to gain loyal customers.
Conclusion
The Facebook shop is an exciting opportunity to showcase your brand’s products inside the most popular social media platform. This feature lets you tap into new audiences, gain more customers, boost sales and grow your business. Take note of and avoid the Facebook Shop mistakes above to help your Facebook Shop thrive.