Article by Emma Gosper, Digital Advisor, Western Sydney Business Centre
Facebook is currently rolling out another new feature which business owners should be welcoming with open arms. The Facebook ‘Shop’ feature enables business and personal pages to sell products directly from your Facebook page, for free, with absolutely no fees.
Once you add your shop section to your page, your customers can message you directly to find out more about your products, or you can send them directly to an external website to complete their purchase.
You can list as many products as you like, feature and showcase specific products, communicate with your customers directly through the page, and get insights, so you can see how many views and/or messages you’ve received for each product.
To add a shop section to your page, all you have to do is click the shop tab and follow the prompts. If you can’t see the shop section, visit settings, edit page and add the shop tab.
You can then select whether you want your customer to message to buy, or check out on another website. Select your currency and continue to follow the prompts to finalise your setup. Once complete, you can start adding products.
People will only see your shop after you have added at least one product and your product has been reviewed and approved. Once you’ve uploaded a new product, share it on your Page timeline to make your customers more aware of it. It’s the only way to make your products eligible to show up in your customers’ News Feeds without them visiting your Shop page directly. Make sure to add catchy content to encourage people to view the products available and make them want to complete their purchase.
At this time, you can’t sell things like services or digital goods through your shop section; you can only sell physical products.
You can also boost individual products to incorporate Facebook product purchases into your marketing strategy. This will not only increase your sales potential, but also drive customers to your Facebook page, which in turn will increase your organic reach and overall social media interaction.