How To Improve Your eCommerce Business With Instagram And Facebook Shops?

eCommerce is growing rapidly alongside the recent technological breakthroughs. And that means more people are beginning to find comfort in online purchases through their devices over physical visits to a brick and mortar shop.

According to Oberlo, approximately 2.1 billion people purchase their goods digitally or online. That’s about one-fourth of the world’s population. And what’s intriguing is that this count grows in thousands daily. 

In fact, 98% of respondents in a survey carried out by Sprout Social voted for online shopping through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram over the conventional eCommerce stores. So if you want to scale your eCommerce business, you need to invest some resources into these two media platforms and watch how your sales move up the chart. 

In this article, you will learn some proven tips to improve your eCommerce Business with Facebook and Instagram shops. Of course, we will talk about each media platform separately so you can understand their features and easily implement the actionable tips listed here.

5 Ways To Improve Your eCommerce Business With Facebook Shop

Like Meta’s other groundbreaking ideas, Business owners can leverage Facebook Shop for optimum business growth. The platform allows you to launch your virtual store, interact with your customers and make huge conversions without breaking the bank. With the right strategy, you can easily develop your local business to an international scale if you learn to use the Facebook store effectively. 

Here are our basic tips on using Facebook Shop to improve your business:

1. Optimize The Store Layout

Facebook offers each business owner enough control over their store layout and you should optimize it to block the noise and attract your customers. You can now regulate your customers’ experience by designing your store to only reflect your product and guide them as they browse through the shop.

This means using color schemes and well defined section; making the store more navigable for your customers. You can use the default layout or any other Facebook templates, but they are common among Facebook store owners. You should use something distinct, a layout that reflects your business and can attract your customers.

Unlike other tips in this section, optimizing your store layout is not to attract your target audience, instead it gives them reasons to return. The customers’ first experience while going through your store would affect their decision to patronize the brand again.

2. Promote Your Brand

It is remarkably easy to create brand awareness on Facebook. It is a social platform so you are already interacting with a lot of people and you can always turn their attention to your product and brand. Promoting your brand should be your primary activity on Facebook. Your posts, memes, and engagements should directly point to what you sell and why your audience should patronize your social store.

You should also explore full engagement by placing paid ads on Facebook. These ads allow you to reach more people within your target demographic. You might need a marketer or facebook ads expert to help out with retargeting and A/B test for maximum ad results

Beside Facebook ads, you can also use engaging posts and Facebook deals. Create regular bonuses and promotions to increase interactions with your customers. Let them enjoy free packages, access to your VIP community, and even some rewards that are not connected to your brand. You can reward some customers with movie tickets, seasonal presents, and other incentives that would increase connection between your brand and the target audience.

3. Create Engaging Content

Your target customers are your primary interactions on Facebook and you should commit your contents to engage them and sustain their attention. You have to curate contents that keep them aware of your business and enthrall them enough to want more from you. 

This engagement might require you to hire content creators or use AI features like ChatGPT when creating tailored contents. Video contents are more popular than long texts, you can create videos describing our products and brand. Quality designs are also necessary. Create colorful designs, headers and exciting shapes with a variety of Procreate stamps to get the optimum interaction with your posts and drive your sales.

Most importantly, you should be consistent with your engagements. Maintain a steady flow of familiar contents, so your clients can connect your brand identity with specific posts. You may also leverage on celebrity endorsements and sponsored posts with influencers. The point is to engage your customers and get their attention to increase your Facebook shop patronage.

4. Measure Your Post Engagement 

Pay attention to your conversion and engagement rates to see how well your current contents and adverts are attracting customers. eCommerce like other business models thrives on reinforcing what works and adjusting the ineffective ones. 

Use Facebook analytic tools like Social pilot, Brand24, Keyhole and Rival IQ to measure post performance, engagement rates, ad publicity and your post performance. You can also integrate Google analytics and other conversion analytic tools to measure how well you are reaching your target audience and how they are taking actions in response to your contents and adverts. Trace your leads’ touchpoints all the way to your e-shop and see what other actions they take.

5. Integrate Your Website with The Store

Integrating your eCommerce website with your Facebook shop is the ultimate hack to promote your business. Your customers can easily navigate between the online store and your Facebook shop, allowing them to make purchases without leaving the Facebook page. 

This shopping experience would drive more patronage because the customers would have closer perspective to your products and more options than Facebook presents. The website would also benefit from the increasing traffic coming from the Facebook shop. Your engaging posts and Facebook ads would increase the awareness about your product and result in more conversion rate in the brand.

You can also use Facebook shop as an analytics platform for your eCommerce website. You can track the website’s major metrics like the store performance, responses from target audience, and an analysis of the most requested products. 

Facebook’s interactive interface makes it the perfect platform for all kinds of interaction including a virtual marketplace. Between the opportunity to engage your customer, the extensive publicity, and the analytics tool, Facebook shop is a perfect business development platform for your eCommerce business.

7 Ways To Improve Your eCommerce Business With Instagram Shop

Instagram Shop is another digital store from Meta that allows adequate interaction between the business owners and their customers. Business owners can build their brand awareness with Instagram’s entertaining features while other commercial features can help them drive sales and analyze responses. We have reviewed have reviewed seven effective ways to improve your eCommerce business with Instagram shop

1. Showcase Your Products

You can draw attention to your brand by uploading excellent pictures and videos of your products on your Instagram shop. Use organic posts to give your potential customers enough perspective on what they would benefit from your brand. Just make sure each content is linked back to your shop.

It is not enough to put up posts that describe your brand and product, you should make them engaging using clear and informative images, relevant hashtags and inciting captions. While instagram filters are excellent ways to make the pictures more attractive, you should remember that the goal is to display realism.

It is also necessary that you keep up with the latest instagram trends and employ them in your posts. These trends reveal what your target customers find engaging and you can create your posts around these trends.

2. Engage your Customers And Ask For Reviews On Your Product’s Page

While other eCommerce platforms feature delayed customer reviews and limited interactions between the vendor and customer, Instagram affords you instant messaging opportunities, allowing you to see what your customers and the public are saying about your brand. 

It is only courteous to reply to comments and messages as they come. Let your customers know that you are not just trying to get their money, but you enjoy interactions with them. You should also follow some of your followers, industry leaders, and people that can influence public perception of your brand or products.

Use Instagram as a customer review platform. Get your customers’ views on your products and let them leave a rating on the product page. More ratings on a product presents you as an authority and reliable eCommerce brand to other potential customers. Attend to their complaints and answer their questions. These engagements would establish a bond that can easily translate into sales through your social store. 

3. Leverage Instagram Stories For Brand Transparency

Customers like to know how their vendors operate, and a “behind the scenes” display of this has become an effective digital marketing strategy. Fortunately, Instagram Stories allows you to share short clips of your production process with your client. You can create reels that display specific aspects of what your brand does or how your product works.

You should also use Instagram stories for your testimonials. Display results from clients that have purchased your products. Fashion brands can show the unpacking process and the clients’ reactions when they get their purchases.

Viewing these instagram videos would establish the target customer’s trust in your brands, because they have seen you outside the organic posts and have enough customer reviews to guide their choices. Afterwards, prompt your viewers to visit your shop and get theirs too.

4. Hack Customer Interaction With Contest And Rewards

Instagram’s instant interactive features makes it the perfect place to build customer relationships. You can stir your customer with contests and giveaway promotions. Leverage your existing followers to create a large community. You can also build customer loyalty by offering frequent incentives which incites them to make purchasing decisions from your shop.

Launch period competitions that build your brand awareness. You should also involve people outside your current customer base to increase their involvement with your brand. Collaborate with similar brands, especially brands that compliment your product and can boost your position in the industry. 

5. Grow Your Customer Base With Instagram Ads

You can reach a larger audience with Instagram ads. Create new ads or repurpose your old posts to distribute them across Instagram. The ad algorithm helps you target specific demographics and analyzes their interests to determine if they are your potential customers.

Instagram Ads help you reach a wider audience. You can pay to publish your products outside your country with people within your desired demographics. It is a cheaper advertising opportunity than you would get anywhere else.

Increase your customer-base by using posts that resonate with a large demographic. Tailor your product advertisement to address an international audience and create a system that can attend to this growing population. Instagram is an unconventional business model, you should have a system that lets you sell to your expanding customer-base without much changes to your existing logistics structure.

6. Let Your Customers Purchase Directly From Your Instagram Shop

Instagram shopping lets you convert your account to your digital store, allowing your customers to browse through your products and make their purchases from your post instead of redirecting them to visit an alternative store or your website to make those purchases.

You can increase your conversion rate and by offering your customers a faster purchasing system. This Instagram system also lets you analyze your conversion rate on Instagram instead of using an external analytic tool. You can now analyze how well your target audience received your ads and what post got you the best conversion rate. 

Using Instagram as your virtual storefront may also save you the challenge of setting up an eCommerce website. WIth Instagram shopping you have covered the basic aspects of eCommerce interaction including catalog, advertising, conversion analyses, purchases and a payment system. 

7. Don’t Ignore Instagram Insights

Instagram’s insight feature may be the most helpful tool to eCommerce owners. Unlike other analytic tools, Insights does not only reveal how your potential customers are interacting with your posts, it also reveals how they interact with Instagram.

Insights shows you when your target audience are most active on instagram, the kind of posts that they react to and how they react to similar brands. This extensive embedded analytics helps you with your future posts, you can plan the right time to interact with your target audience, design contents and ads that they can relate with, and tailor your brand image to meet their expectations.

Ultimately, getting your desired interaction is not about getting more followers, but building a relatable identity. The best way to improve your eCommerce business on Instagram is to increase your interaction with your target audience and then redirect their attention to your products.

Conclusion

Facebook and Instagram offer similar services, but also collaborate to create the perfect marketing platform for business owners. Combining both platforms can help you create the ideal model to boost your eCommerce business. 

You can institute affiliate marketing structures on Facebook or work with influencers on Instagram to improve your brand image. Instagram and Facebook Shops are free and you can enjoy basic services and analytics at no cost, but your budget would determine other aspects like Ads, Contests, and interactions with other brands or Influencers. 

Acowebs are the developers of the WooCommerce Deposits– Partial Payments  plugin that helps the customers pay a fixed price, percentage, partial payment, or deposits, for the products purchased from your Woocommerce store. It also has developed various other plugins like WooCommerce Currency Switcher, the multi-currency converter plugin that shows prices in the user’s local currency and helps customers connect to desired products faster. It helps customers quickly compare products and make a judgment easily.