Ecommerce boom has been pretty significant in this decade, especially in developing countries like India. Most businesses are looking to open an online store to sell their products or services. The major audience for selling products online has been from Facebook. In fact, Facebook ads have been offered to help ecommerce websites or businesses target their specific audience on this social networking platform. It is common for every business to have a Facebook fan page for their business promotion and to increase their online product sales.

The growing demand for an online presence has lead to a number of ecommerce website builders and themes come up for establishing an online website to sell stuff. Now, if your major customers are going to come from Facebook, then, it makes sense to have a Facebook online store to sell items directly to the Facebook users. If you are wondering about its possibility, then, please read this article further.

Here, we shall discuss how to create Facebook store online and sell products for your business through Facebook page itself. In simple words, check out tools or apps to build Facebook store on your Facebook page and start selling online.

Why build a Facebook store on your Facebook business page?

It is very easy for any one to create a Facebook page for business promotion. Most Facebook users are already aware about the importance of having a Facebook page to promote anything amongst a large audience. It enables you to invite countless people to visit your page using your network of friends on Facebook. And everyone knows that Facebook has billions of active users which would contain a major chunk of the target audience for your business. And viral marketing (to target audience with specific interests) is pretty easy through this social networking giant.

For businesses, the number of likes on Facebook fan page matters a lot and is a measure of their popularity on the most widely used social networking platform. So, even though a business can track increase in its online sales from its ecommerce website after starting a Facebook page, there is no guarantee that almost everyone who likes the page will take out time to visit the ecommerce store. So, in order to increase the chances of such visitors check out the products on the Facebook business page itself, businesses can setup Facebook ecommerce store on the page itself i.e. the store can be setup in a separate tab on the fan page. This would clearly allow every page visitor to quickly check the products available online for that business and even make a purchase directly from that embedded store.

Steps to create online store on Facebook

If you already have an ecommerce store online and want to start a Facebook store, then, you can do it by creating an app for the social networking store and then syncing all your products with that store along with upload of price information, photos and product descriptions. However, there are several ecommerce builder apps or software that empower you to achieve this purpose without getting involved in writing any code. In simple words, top ecommerce store builder apps can help you build online Facebook store to sell products without you required to have any technical knowledge.

One such highly popular and seamless Facebook ecommerce store builder tool is Shopify. Let’s check out how you can build Shopify Facebook store. You can use Shopify tool to build your own ecommerce store online within few minutes itself. For starters, you can experiment with this store on a 14-day free trial period. You are bound to like the features of Shopify tool and how it makes it easy to start selling products online for any business.

Once you are well-versed with the online Shopify store and have loaded all products along with payment information and descriptions, you can create a Facebook page dedicated to your ecommerce business. Then, you just have to get your Shopify Facebook store app which would ensure all product information and image thumbnails is pulled directly from your website to the Facebook platform. Easy and secured payment options (credit card, paypal, etc.) is offered to customers willing to purchase your products from their smartphones or tablets.

You can check out an example of ecommerce portal ‘Jaxon Home Furniture estore’ built using Shopify tool below:

It is important to note that you can get the Shopify store created directly without you requiring to have an ecommerce website. You can sell variety of goods / products on the Facebook store belonging to categories like furniture, apparels, cosmetics, electronics, etc.

Key Features of Shopify Facebook estore tool

Now, whenever any product is updated on your website, it is automatically reflected on the same product available on the Facebook e-store (created using Shopify app) i.e. real-time update is an important functionality provided to your store. If you do not wish to start selling all products from Facebook, you can select (and import) products of your choice to be sold on the Shopify Facebook online shop.

You are given the freedom to have banners of your choice. Also, you can determine how many columns of products would be displayed to the users. In short, you can change the look and feel of the store, especially the way products are organized for display. You can even have an optional ‘Like Gate’ that shall force your Facebook page visitors to like it before they can view the products you sell online. The best part about this tool is that it entitles you to 24/7 online support for any issues that you might face in handling your online store. In case you need more Facebook business tips, you can access the Shopify blog.

For the various pricing plans offered by Shopify, you can visit the official Shopify website at: Shopify Pricing Plans. The starter plan begins at $14 per month with unlimited bandwidth, 25 products, chat as well as email support and 1 GB file storage capacity.

The adaptability of the Facebook Shopify store is amazing as it can seamlessly accommodate all changes or new features that you add to your online ecommerce store using different apps provided by Shopify. You can view the Shopify Facebook Page at: Facebook Page of Shopify Software

Apart from Shopify, Bigcommerce is another good Facebook store builder tool that is available to us. It is similar to Shopify and can pose a challenge in future with some innovative features. As of now, I prefer Shopify over Bigcommerce because of the number of users that have successfully used Shopify and shared some amazing experiences. Please feel free to share your opinion about these two online store building software or any other effective ecommerce tool that you may have used!