Facebook Shop for businesses: tips for your digital shop window
With a Facebook Shop, retailers do not only have a new sales channel. They can also use it to reach their customers online and increase their sales volume.
Shopping, no matter whether online or in a store, is all about recommendations and personal contact. Every day, billions of people meet up on social media channels and interact with each other. Because of this, social media platforms such as Facebook are a gigantic global marketplace and a huge opportunity for businesses.
Social networks are important sales channels
This is precisely where buying customers inform themselves about products or let themselves be inspired by others. Up to 43 percent of social media users worldwide use social networks to gather information on products. Some studies even predict that by 2040, about 95 percent of all purchases will be made online.
Therefore, social commerce offers retailers a great deal of potential, both as a way to reach customers as well as increase sales. With 1.8 billion daily active users, Facebook is without a doubt one of the largest platforms for social commerce. Especially so since 2020.
The reason being that Facebook, as a response to the worldwide lockdown, expanded the features of the Facebook Shop to help in particular small and medium-sized businesses. Therefore, the Facebook Shop now offers interesting sales opportunities to the stationery sector as well.
The new Facebook Shop
With the new Facebook Shop, businesses can upload their product range into a digital catalogue and present it online. Potential customers can not only look at the products, but also put them into their shopping cart and buy them directly. Retailers also have the opportunity to customise their digital shop window. This customisation can then be adjusted to fit to different target groups as well. Facebook’s Commerce Manager walks businesses through the process step by step.
Tips for a successful Facebook Shop
- Consistent brand presentation creates a high recognition value and helps retailers stand out from the competition.
- Fast customer communication is key for customer satisfaction. Retailers should therefore react to requests as quickly as possible.
- The shop has to be adjusted to the target group, not the other way around. Recognising the different target groups’ needs will lead to more sales opportunities.
Setting up a Facebook Shop costs nothing. And those who use a Facebook Shop partner such as Shopify or WooCommerce do not have to pay transaction fees either. The simple process makes it very easy for small businesses without their own online shop and retailers who until now have relied on sales in their brick-and-mortar stores to get a Facebook Shop started. Stationery retailers and businesses can also profit from a Facebook Shop, as the following example shows.
Ink Meets Paper’s success story
For specialised stationery retailer Ink Meets Paper, setting up a Facebook Shop led to a significant increase in sales. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the small business would sell stationery and letter products out of a store in Charleston, South Carolina. The Facebook Shop made it possible for the business to offer its products online. Ink Meets Paper now reaches more customers, some even far away from its hometown, and uses the online shop as another sales channel in addition to the brick-and-mortar store.
How retailers profit from social commerce on Facebook
A Facebook Shop offers retailers many advantages. Simply put, the platform makes it possible for businesses to open an online shop free of charge, potentially reaching billions of people. Whoever manages to really stand out here will have an edge over the competition. Beyond that, the shopping experience in the Facebook Shop is seamless, making the online purchasing experience even more pleasant. The Facebook Shop creates room for enjoyable and stress-free shopping strolls, as well as more personal interactions, which in turn increases sales potential. The Facebook Shop offers retailers an interesting second sales channel, even if they still want to count on most of their sales happening in brick-and-mortar stores.
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About the author:
BASIC thinking is an online magazine and is one of the widest reaching tech platforms in German-speaking countries. The magazine reports about social media, marketing, and business topics daily. This article was written by Christina Widner from BASIC thinking GmbH.
