As a business owner, have you ever wanted to sell your products on Facebook? This certainly sounds like a good idea, and there have been several “apps” built that allow you to do this. There are some problems however: most of these apps are not free, and people may never see your products. I’ve come up with a solution that overcomes these obstacles and anyone with an ecommerce website can implement this today. Here’s how:
1. Go to your business Facebook page and create a photo album.
2. Name your album the same as you would categories in your store. For example, if you sell flavored popcorn, you might have categories like “Cheese Popcorn”, “Candied Popcorn”, “Plain Popcorn”, etc.
3. Add an image of the item you want to sell. For example, if you sell a “Black Cherry Flavored Popcorn”, add a photo of this flavor to the “Candied Popcorn” album you just created.
4. In the description, talk about how great this product is, then add a link (starting with http://) to the product page on your website where someone can buy this product.
Here’s what it looks like to the user:
First, they pick on the album (category):
Next they pick the flavor they are interested in:
The image is displayed, along with the link you added to the description. While this example doesn’t show it, you could add your product name (and even price) as text on the image:
The visitor to your Facebook page can now click on the link which takes them directly to your ordering page:
Pretty simple, right? And there is an even bigger advantage to doing this versus using an app: Your image posts are added to your timeline, which can end up on your fan’s newsfeed. This gives you significantly better exposure than having a tab on your page that most visitors are unlikely to click. With the recent changes to organic reach of Facebook pages, this is a huge benefit.
The example above uses one of my clients, Main St Shoppe. Be sure to visit them for the “World’s Best Gourmet Popcorn”.
If you are still interested in adding an app to your page, here are some options:
https://www.facebook.com/appcenter/my-fb-store
https://www.facebook.com/appcenter/storeya
https://www.facebook.com/appcenter/ecwid-shop
The last one, ecwid actually allows you to build a store that can be inserted into any website and display the same products on Facebook, without re-entering anything. Follow this link if you want to set up an account with ecwid.
Let me know how this works for you and what methods you are using to sell your products on Facebook.
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