Shopify Facebook Stores: The Cheap & Easy Way To Sell Online

Whether you are sticking a toe in the waters of eCommerce or you already have an established presence online, there’s never been a better time to time to start selling all of your products right from Facebook. If you are a newbie to the online selling game, starting a Shopify Facebook Store is undoubtedly one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get started. And if you already have a solid Facebook following, what’s stopping you from selling there, too? 

Before we get started, there may be a few of you wondering why you can’t just open up a Facebook Shop directly on Facebook. While you could certainly do that, you’ll still have to open a Stripe account and integrate it with Facebook to take payments. And Facebook inventory management is, shall we say, a little less than ideal. Facebook itself even suggests integration with a third-party app for better inventory management. And lucky for us, that’s where Shopify starts to shine.

Since Shopify already uses Stripe to accept and process payments, you only need to set up one account. Then you’re already covered with processing, inventory management, Facebook, and even more selling channels right from the get-go!

With a solution like Shopify, you are also keeping things a lot simpler if you ever want to expand beyond Facebook. Want to start selling on Etsy, Amazon, eBay or all three? You still won’t have to worry about multiple inventory channels because Shopify syncs everything for you automatically!

In this post, we are focusing on the Shopify Lite plan, which has the lowest possible starting price point. (Read our review for a more comprehensive look at all of the plan’s features). It doesn’t come with a full ecommerce store of its own, but you get access to the mobile POS app for in-person payments, as well as a Facebook shop. You can also create a handy little Buy button with a product image and stick it anywhere on the web. So whether you manage a blog, have a site, or are playing around with an ad campaign and a single landing page, Shopify makes it super easy to slap a buy button anywhere and start selling your stuff!

However, if you do want to upgrade to a plan with a hosted ecommerce store, you’ll get support for a Facebook store and many other channels — and you’ll even get some more advanced features for Shopify POS. Check out our Shopify review for more a more in-depth discussion of Shopify’s ecommerce features.

So let’s get started by first setting up our Shopify account. We can add our Facebook shop and add everything to our store directly from our Shopify dashboard!

How To Set Up A Facebook Store Through Shopify Lite

First, let’s visit Shopify and open an account to get the ball rolling. After clicking “Start Your Free 14-Day Trial”, enter your name, store name, and create a password. Signing up is simple and fast, and you don’t need to provide your credit card information. 

Note: Don’t feel like choosing a plan yet? No problem! You can still play around in the Shopify dashboard, add your products, explore your Sales Channels options, and even take sales (if you set up Shopify Payments)! With a 14-day trial window, you have plenty of time to check things out before making a decision.

After filling out the information on the first window (your name, store name, and password), Shopify will bring you right to the dashboard where you can start exploring!

Below is a screenshot of the Shopify dashboard. Right now, we are going to focus on the Sales Channels section, located at the bottom left. To add Facebook, hit the circular plus button next to Sales Channels. I’ve already added Point of Sale, Messenger, Buy Button, and Facebook to my Sales Channels, but as you can see, the Facebook page isn’t connected for this business yet.

Important Note: If you do not have a Facebook Business page set up already, scoot over and do that so you can create your Shopify Facebook store. Facebook will walk you through the business page creation process. You can add as much (or as little) information about your business (e.g., physical location) as you think is appropriate.

Now let’s get back to adding a Shop section to our Facebook Business page through Shopify. From your Shopify Dashboard, it is simple to connect your Facebook Business page. Select “Connect Account” (blue button pictured above), then choose the name of your Facebook Business page in the drop-down menu. And voila! You now have a brand-spanking-new Facebook Shop.

Next, we are going to take a look at a Shopify Facebook shop that is rocking it, and then we will set up a few products of our own!

Of the three businesses that gave their testimonial for Shopify in the image below, two of them have an active Facebook Shop — Mindzai Toys and Tattly.

Mindzai Toys is a fantastic example of a company that has enough stock to necessitate inventory management and category creations. From the front end, things look slick because the seller separated them nicely into categories. In the example screenshot below, you can see they have Plush and Minifigures separated into collections. Thinking about how you categorize and display your product can help your customers find what they are looking for much easier — and that’s exactly what we want.

Keep reading the next section, because I’m going to show you how to easily add products and create a Collection for your Shopify Facebook shop!

Adding Products

As I mentioned earlier in this post, your Shopify Dashboard is the place to add, edit, and categorize your products. As a reminder, everything you do in your dashboard will automatically sync in your Facebook Store, and anywhere else you are selling through Shopify, too! Need to change the price? Have an updated image? Whatever you edit in your Shopify Products section will instantly be reflected in any Sales Channel you’ve added to Shopify, including your Facebook store.  

To add or edit products, select Products and enter in the details as seen below.

Note that the “Add Product” page gives you quite a few editing options in the description section. Although, I did find out the hard way that Facebook doesn’t always translate all of the formatting rules correctly, so check twice when it comes to creating bullets and page indents. If something doesn’t look right in your Facebook store, you can always go back and change or remove formatting here in your dashboard.

After adding a title, description, and uploading an image, you’ll scroll down and fill in the following sections in your product listing page:

• Inventory Information: Fill in the SKU, Barcode, Inventory Policy, and Quantity.
• Shipping: Note that you must select “This is a physical product” to sell on Facebook. You can also set shipping fields such as Item Weight, Customs Information, Harmonized System Code (if applicable), and Fulfillment.
• Variants: Add any versions like sizes or colors you’d like to keep track of in your shop.
• Product Availability: You can manage the Sales Channels your product is available to sell on (e.g., Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, etc.).
• Organization:  Fill in and define the Product Type and Vendor fields, if needed.
• Collections: Select Collection (if created).
• Tags: View, create, and add tags for your product.
• Finalize Listing: Select Save to add to your store, or Delete product from your shop from your products page.

Pro Tip: Add tags and define a Collection so you can keep your shops organized and let your customers find what they need faster. The section below will show you how!

Create Product Collections

Under Products in the left-hand column, notice that I’ve selected Collections. Creating a collection is essential to keep things organized for you, your admin, and your shoppers, so it’s worth it to take a look!

For this shop, let’s display all of our tops together by setting our Collections to group anything we tag with “shirt” automatically.  You can see in the shot above that we have our conditions set for Product Tag is equal to shirt. Now when a customer comes to our Facebook shop, they will see all our shirts displayed in a neat row — as long as I’ve tagged them correctly! We can do the same for the other types of garments and accessories, too.

I’m going to revisit the t-shirt product (seen in the screenshot below), so you can see the tags we’ve assigned to the top. Later, we may also want to create a collection of warm-weather items or cotton material, so I’ve also added a “summer” and “cotton” tag as well.

Navigating Facebook’s Approval Process For Your Shopify Facebook Store

There are a few things to keep in mind when you sell on Facebook, in general. First, Facebook runs a really tight ship when it comes to what products merchants can sell. For example, you can only sell physical products that meet its guidelines. While you can probably guess that you can’t sell explicit or illegal items, it also means no digital downloads or services whatsoever, unfortunately.

Second, Facebook occasionally takes a bit longer to approve a product, so don’t panic if you don’t see an item show up in your Facebook store right away. This wait is on Facebook’s end and has nothing to do with Shopify approving or disapproving of your items. If Facebook denies a listing and after reviewing their terms and conditions you feel Facebook missed the mark, you can send them a note to appeal their decision. For the most part, your product listing should go off without a hitch, however.

In the next section, we have yet another example of an active Shopify Facebook store that has items and collections set up nicely. We are focusing on something else in this screenshot, however. Did you know you can sync Facebook Messenger with Shopify to promote and sell your products through direct messaging with your followers? Let’s add Messenger and complete our Shopify Facebook store!

Adding Facebook Messenger & Other Sales Channels

What does Facebook Messenger do for your business? For starters, you can converse with your customers directly, recommend products, and since your Shopify products automatically sync with Messenger, customers can click to buy any of your available products right within the Messenger app!

You can also utilize Facebook Messenger in any future marketing campaigns and share your latest wares. Messenger is just one more tool to get closer to your customers, but you’ll have to opt-in to connect Messenger to Shopify; it doesn’t automatically sync when you have a Facebook Shop. To sync your Facebook Business Messenger with Shopify, you’ll simply click the plus icon next to Sales Channels from your Dashboard and add Facebook Messenger, as seen below.

Now that we are here, it’s a great time to mention again that your Shopify Lite plan includes other ways to sell, too! If you want to create a Buy Button and put in on a web page or start selling on Amazon, you can easily do that. Not sure where you want to sell? Feel free to explore and find out what options work best for your business. You can always remove a Sales Channel later.

Keep in mind that Shopify’s Point of Sale app enables you to sell at an event, at a pop-up shop, or anywhere else you happen to be. And when you sign up, they send you a free reader! The reader and POS app are the most independent of all of the options, and it’s certainly worth it to keep a reader on hand. If you’d like, you can check out our Shopify Lite review, which focuses on the features of the mPOS, as well as the Shopify Chip & Swipe Reader review. 

Getting Paid With Shopify Payments

With all of this exploring, let’s not forget one of the most critical aspects of setting up a Shopify Facebook store — getting paid! The checkout buttons for your store will depend on what payment types you have enabled, and whether your customer has a digital wallet.

Shopify Checkout Buttons

Your customers can pay with their credit card via Shopify Payments (powered by Stripe), a digital wallet (if applicable), and PayPal for starters. If you want to adjust what payment providers you use, you can do all of that in your Shopify Dashboard within your Settings section under “Payment Providers.”

There is one more important step that you’ll want to do after signing up for your free trial of Shopify: complete the Shopify Payments setup so you can start accepting payments! If you select the button to complete account setup, you will find a reasonably short form. Here you’ll fill in business details, a general product description, and the particulars that Shopify needs to send your payments to you:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Last four digits of your social security number
• Bank account information for payout deposit

When you integrate any new sales channel with Shopify, you won’t have to repeat the process — you are all set and officially ready for business! For more information on Shopify Payments and what to expect, check out our Shopify Payments Review: The Pros and Cons of Shopify’s Integrated Payment Processor.

How Much Does A Shopify Facebook Store Cost?

Mobile	POS	Online	Social Media
Mobile App + Free Card Reader	Point of Sale	Online Store	Social Media Selling
Get Started	Get Started	Get Started	Get Started
Low-cost POS for iOS and Android with free hardware	All-purpose POS integrated with all sales channels	Build a store or integrate with your current website	Sell on Facebook and other platforms
Starts at $9/month	Starts at $29/month	Starts at $29/month	Starts at $9/month
Free Trial	Free Trial	Free Trial	Free Trial

We talked about Shopify Lite being the most inexpensive Shopify option, but just how cheap is it? To sell on social media, in person, or sell items from your existing website, you’ll only pay $9/ month for Shopify. To process credit card payments online with Shopify Payments, you’ll pay payment processing fees of 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. (In-person transactions process at 2.7% each.)

If you want to step your Shopify features up another notch, the next plan up is $29/month. All of your Shopify Lite features come along with you, but you also can create an official online store with lots of support and some more features along the way. Not sure what to choose or want more details? Check out our Shopify Lite Review or Shopify Review to find out more!

Keep in mind that you can use Shopify’s ecommerce platform with an external gateway and processor, but you will pay for the convenience. In addition to whatever fees charged by your gateway and payment provider(s), you’ll pay another 2.0% per transaction to Shopify. So it’s definitely worth considering using Shopify Payments.

Is A Shopify Facebook Store Right For You?

Considering the cost and value, we think Shopify Lite is a fantastic option for a merchant to set up a Facebook shop. But do you need one? Only you can decide that. However, a Shopify Facebook store can help any merchant who already has a substantial Facebook following get even closer to a sale. That’s because your customers can click to purchase without having to navigate through multiple screens and domains. But you have start somewhere, so if you are new to eCommerce, Facebook also offers a very inexpensive way to get in front of a lot of people and grow.

Listing your items right on Facebook can also make sharing specific products and creating social media campaigns a bit easier, too. Additionally, for businesses that have a lot of inventory, setting up a Shopify Facebook vs. just setting up a stand-alone Facebook shop seems to make more sense overall.

Here’s why: Facebook itself admits that inventory management can get a big unwieldy unless you utilize a third-party app, and lists Shopify as one of top choices for merchants. Better yet, you don’t have to worry about setting up yet another account to process payments, because Shopify Payments is all rolled up into one neat option for you.

The final reason we like setting up a shop through with a Shopify Lite plan is that you can sell on several other sales channels like Amazon, Etsy, and your own site, too. Plus, if everything goes well, you can easily upgrade to a full, Shopify-hosted ecommerce shop and keep your existing infrastructure — you won’t even have to bother with importing inventory! Just update your Shopify subscription and start working on fine-tuning the look of your store.

Ultimately, we recommend testing the waters yourself via Shopify’s free trial period to see if you are comfortable with all the features. 

Do you have experience with a Shopify Facebook store? Have questions about the sign-up process? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!