Facebook easily has the biggest audience share on social media, with the platform enjoying a massive 2.9 billion monthly active users. Instagram (Owned by Meta, a.k.a. Facebook) isn't too far behind, either, with 2 billion people using the platform each and every month. Therefore, there's a lot of potential for an Instagram or Facebook marketing agency can target for their ecommerce customers.You put a lot of effort, time and money into creating your Shopify store, so when marketing and selling on social media, you want customers to get the same experience they would on your website. It can be difficult to achieve, however, that's not the case when you integrate your checkout directly on Instagram or Facebook.
If your target audience hangs out on either Instagram or Facebook (and we've already seen that billions do on a regular basis), you ideally want customers to enjoy a smooth shopping experience. Shopify allows you to bring the look and feel of your ecommerce store to Facebook Shops (the platform's existing virtual store setup that sits on your homepage).Shopify is known to offer powerful selling and marketing tools that allow businesses to scale their operations over Facebook and Instagram, allowing them to:
As any good Facebook Ads marketing agency will tell you, one of the main barriers to selling on social media is having to direct potential customers away from the social media app they're using. Shopify circumvents the problem by ensuring people don't have to. They just buy from you there and then from your Facebook and Instagram checkouts.
Instagram Stories and Facebook posts often take the reader on a journey - it's one of the huge appeals the platforms have to people. They cause users to emotionally connect with what they're reading about, and the beauty is that Shopify allows you and your products to become part of that story. Having your checkout on the platform allows for…
Your Instagram marketing agency can help you to increase conversion in this way, as people are simply able to buy more quickly, leaving much less time for doubt or changes of heart. Also, it's easy for Shopify merchants to sync their inventory and start leveraging the benefits.
You don't necessarily need to have a Shopify store to sell on Facebook or Instagram, but if not, you're missing out on everything that the eCommerce giant offers. Of course, it's good to have a Facebook Marketing agency there for support, but the job of syncing up all your sales, customer and inventory data can be carried out fairly simply from your Shopify admin. From a retailer's point of view, a Facebook/Instagram-embedded store and checkout will help you get the most from your Facebook ad campaigns. As soon as those customers start rolling in, the Shopify platform allows you to manage payments, orders and returns. What's more, it's actually free to sell products from Shopify in this way, as these selling channels are typically included as part of your plan.
Also known as Shopify Shop Pay, Instagram, and Facebook checkouts can be hugely effective at boosting the bottom line of ecommerce businesses. Want proof? Well, in 2020, Shopify carried out a survey of the biggest online retailers with Shop Pay enabled over the three months between January to February 2020. The results were compelling. From discovery through to conversion, Instagram & Facebook checkouts earned almost twice as much revenue when compared to regular checkouts. Over both desktop and mobile, the seamless experience provided made a massive difference.Other benefits you or your Instagram or Facebook marketing agency can use include:
Another great benefit of using Shop Pay is an ecological one. The platform's carbon removal initiative means that every time someone checks out in this way, a contribution is made to Shopify's Sustainability Fund, that's actively planting trees as well as doing other work to rebalance the carbon in our atmosphere.
The reason why having a checkout on social media is such a great idea is because of a simple fact - people are easily convinced to abandon their online shopping carts. Whether talking about shipping fees, extra purchase taxes or, indeed, a convoluted purchasing process, many things can turn a buyer with intent into yet another lost sale.Regardless of whether it's set up by a professional Instagram or Facebook Marketing agency or by your own in-house team, having checkouts on the platforms would seem to be the wise move. Saving vital seconds and offering the buyer an uninterrupted journey - and with a minimum of friction - it’s pretty hard to argue against making the change.