Want to sell your products on Instagram or Facebook? Looking for a tutorial to show you how to set up your Facebook Shop or Instagram Shop with Commerce Manager? By the end of this video, you’ll have a Facebook and Instagram shop and be ready to start selling your products online.
What You’ll Need
Before you can start selling your products on Facebook or running ads, there’s a couple of things that you’ll need. First is a Business Manager account with full admin access. If you already have an existing e-commerce store, you will want to have the backend login access to your e-commerce website. It would be good to know what e-commerce platform you’re selling on, and also which specific pixel is connected to that e-commerce site.
If you don’t already have an e-commerce store and you’re starting from scratch, that’s okay. We’re gonna walk you through all the steps, and you’ll be able to get fully set up as well.
What is Facebook Commerce Manager?
So what is Facebook Commerce Manager? This is for businesses that are actively selling on Facebook and Instagram platforms. Without a commerce manager account, you cannot run certain types of ads, and you also will not be able to set up a Facebook or Instagram shop. Commerce Manager can be used for physical but also digital product sellers as well.
How to Create a Catalog
The first thing we’re gonna do is log in to our Business Manager or Business Suite account and navigate to Business Settings. Once you’re inside of Business Settings, you should see a drop-down for Accounts. You should be looking for something that says Commerce Manager. If you do see that tab, it looks like you may have already started this process in the past.
However, it’s still gonna be better for us to all start from scratch in Catalogs, which is going to be under the Data Sources tab.
Once I’m on Catalogs, I’m gonna see the option to create a new catalog. You may also see other catalogs in there from the past, but again, start from scratch.
Go ahead and click Add and Create a New Catalog. Then give your catalog a name, this is only gonna be something that you see and should represent the products that will go in this catalog. In the dropdown, it will allow you to select the type of products that you’re selling.
The next screen will allow you to set permissions. Just because something was created inside of a Business Manager account does not mean that everyone has access to it. You should select everyone on the left-hand side that should be able to access or use this catalog in any way and give them full admin access by turning on the Manage catalog toggle. If you see anything that says Conversions, API, Shopify, API, go ahead and select those as well.
The next tab is going to allow me to connect a pixel to this specific catalog, you should double check. You know the pixel that’s on your current e-commerce website, or simply the pixel that you plan on using for this e-commerce store. If you connect this catalog to the wrong pixel, you will not see the results that you’re looking for.
If you are not sure from that prompt which pixel is yours, don’t worry, simply click X to close the dialogue box, and we’re then gonna see a button that says Associate Sources on the Catalog tab. That will also allow us to select the connected pixel, and also just gives you a little bit more information so that you can verify you’re selecting the correct one.
How to Add Items: Manual
The next step is to click the button on the far right that says Open in Commerce Manager.
Now that you’re in Commerce Manager, you want to click on the top right-hand side button that says Add Items.
The first will be to manually add products, the second will be to upload through a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet will allow you to have more control over the inventory that shows, so that no one purchases anything out of stock. This also can be helpful if you simply have all of your product data in a spreadsheet already. If you already have an active e-commerce site, we can do a sync with a third party e-commerce provider like Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce.The last option is to do this through the pixel where the pixel data will pull in the products from your site. This can be a little bit more advanced and you may need a developer for this.
So for this post, we’re going to mention how to do this with your third party integration as well as how to add products manually.
After you click on Manual and click next, you will already see the very first line item. All you need to do is go through each column and update the information to fit your product, upload the image, add the price, and it’s already active. Once you’re done with the first product, you can add the second, and so on and so forth.
How to Add Items: 3rd-Party Integration
We’ll show you how to sync your product catalog with an existing e-commerce store. This depends on the platform that you’re currently using to host your products. However, virtually all of these options are done in the backend of your website through a plugin or add on. It will give you those instructions once you select your specific e-commerce provider.
Let’s go ahead and add these products through our third-party integration. Select the right third party e-commerce platform you’re using and follow the prompts that it provides to you.
You’ll go through and select the specific assets that you’ll be connecting to this account. Double check and make sure that those assets such as the Business Manager, the Facebook Page, the Pixel and the Catalog you just created were all the correct assets.
You may run into an issue where certain items are greyed out. While there are different reasons for these things, the most common is that those assets are not existing within the same Business Manager account, or you as a person do not have access to those assets. Adding access through the Partner tab in Business Manager is the easiest way to overcome that.
You’ll then give your new commerce account a name, and then it’s gonna have you verify all the information you just input or selected, make sure to double check that, and click Continue. Once you’ve gone through all those prompts it should redirect you back to your site and instruct you on how to sync those products. This is done in the backend of your current e-commerce website. Once that’s completed, hop back over to Business Manager, and we will set up that commerce account.
Finalising Commerce Account
Whether you added your products manually or synced them with your third-party platform, double-check that your items are inside of your catalog by going under the Catalog tab and clicking on Items.
Once you’ve done that, let’s hop over to the Overview tab so we can finish setting up this commerce account. We should see at the top of the page the option to customise your shop.
Clicking on Customise your shop will allow you to add collections or groupings of products, or you can leave it as is, and simply hit Publish.
And if you used a third party e-commerce integration where checkout on another website is already the default checkout method, you are now ready to start selling in Facebook and Instagram shop. However, you will not be able to allow people to pay directly through Facebook and Instagram. Your shop will simply link my items to the product page on my for someone to check out as they normally do.
Set Up Native Checkout
Let’s go in and find out how to set up Facebook and Instagram checkout. This will also make this a much more frictionless experience for someone purchasing from you!
Click on ‘Get started with Facebook and Instagram Checkout’. You will be redirected to an article about how to become eligible for this account. Go ahead, look through that. Go through the steps and start that process so you can be approved. Once you’ve done that, you will then need to go back to your shop or commerce account and fill in some additional details.
If you were already eligible, you’re simply gonna follow the prompts in your Facebook Commerce Manager Overview section. Such as setting up your shipping details, your return details, and finally your payout information. It needs your business and bank account information to be able to deposit the funds to you. Go ahead and get approved and verified as soon as possible! If you do go through those steps, you may still encounter a wait time. Either way, there is no better time than right now to start this process.
Done going through the steps to enable your Facebook and Instagram checkout? Go ahead and click Publish Shop. Now you’re all done with the set up Facebook and Instagram shop with Commerce Manager. You’re all ready to sell!
