How to build a social media shop

Using social media alongside your eCommerce store can be a great way to increase your revenue. If a customer purchases through social media, they can feel more confident than if they were to purchase through a separate website. However, building a social media shop can be intimidating. 

In this guide, we’re going to look at: 

• The benefits of a social media shop
• How to build a social media shop
• Promoting your social media shop

You may be wondering if setting up a social media shop is worth the hassle. As it turns out, there are several benefits for choosing to sell your goods through a social shop. 

If your target market is the type of person who already spends a lot of time on social media, it’s going to be challenging to bring them away from it. Bring your shop to them instead of forcing them to visit a separate website. By making your shop easily accessible, their shopping experience becomes far more enjoyable and user-friendly.

In order to have a social media shop, you’re going to need a page on the same platform. Since you have the page, you might use social media to promote your business and shop. The more you create and upload content, the more you’ll grow your socials, and increase the number of people visiting your page and store.

It’s important to remember that social growth isn’t always consistent or linear. One month you may gain 10,000 new followers, then the next, you might only gain 500. To give your business the best chance, you should stick to an upload schedule. 

By growing your page and attracting a larger audience, you might find your website traffic improves. Since these people are already interested in your business, they are more likely to purchase your products. With traffic from people genuinely interested in your products, you might find that you have a higher conversion of visitors to customers. 

One perk of professional social media accounts is that they typically let you see exactly how many people visit your page. These metrics are an excellent way to track the return you’re getting for investing your time into a social store.

You may have access to analytics, which can tell you where your customers are or how they find you. Using this information, you can build a more accurate image of your audience, or decide how to better target the groups you’re reaching. 

Each social media platform has its own shop setup. An Instagram shop, for instance, needs a different method to a TikTok shop. If you need a specialised guide for building a shop on a specific platform, like Etsy, we have those available. 

Even if your chosen platform doesn’t need an eCommerce store page, it can help to have one anyway. If you’re already selling on your website, then this may already be set up. One common eCommerce platform is Shopify, which integrates nicely with the Facebook Shop.

Of course, using an eCommerce platform may subject you to fees or a percentage of your revenue. Different platforms can have different requirements, so it’s best to compare various eCommerce providers before deciding.

You may feel that some products you offer won’t sell as well to audiences on a particular platform. For example, because of TikTok’s primarily younger audiences, you may wish to sell specific products.

Once you are happy with the products you have on offer, you can proceed to the next stage.

You may encounter some difficulties on this step, since not all social platform shops can take a customer’s order or payment. Facebook and Instagram, for instance, are two platforms that require a separate payment portal. 

If you already use your own website with a built-in eCommerce shop, you should be able to link it with your social shop of choice. Any orders should then come through as if they were placed directly on your website. All that remains is to package and post the orders as they’re processed.

There’s very little point in having a social media shop if people don’t know about it. Taking the time to market your shop properly can result in great returns. There are a couple of different ways you can grow your social media shop.

Just because your shop is on a specific platform, doesn’t mean you can’t promote it on other social media. Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta, so cross-posting content is relatively simple once your accounts are set up. Creating and posting content regularly is the best way to achieve organic growth, and direct traffic to your store or website.

Most social media platforms let business accounts purchase ad space. If you decide to pay for social ads, it may be comforting to know that you can enter a spending budget. The cost of your social advertising will then be limited by how much you’re willing to spend. 

Of course, simply purchasing ad space may not be enough to see sufficient traffic, so it’s recommended that you use multiple content marketing methods to promote your shop.

If your online shop is already set before you incorporate a social media shop, you may have to track different revenue streams. Managing multiple income streams can be both complicated and time-consuming. Instead, you can try using accounting software, like the Countingup app, to automatically keep your finances organised. 

Start your three-month free trial today.

Find out more here.