One of the biggest decisions you’ll take as an online seller is to choose a platform for selling your products. You can go for a fully managed service like Shopify or BigCommerce, a completely configurable shopping cart, or a solution like WooCommerce.

Even though these solutions start at $0 or at about $25/mo, their costs add up quickly as you add more apps to extend your store functionalities.

In addition to the maintenance costs of these tools/services, you also need to buy a domain name and an SSL certificate (and any other premium products you might need to build your store). As you can see – you do need some reasonable investment for all of this. Now, if you already have an audience — even if it’s a small, offline one— you can justify all these expenses.

As you can see – you do need some reasonable investment for all of this. Now, if you already have an audience — even if it’s a small, offline one— you can justify all these expenses. But what if you’ve zero people to sell to? And very limited budget? Or … if you’re just ‘experimenting’ with online selling or trying a product?

Well, in that case, you might not be able to afford these solutions. But here’s where a Facebook Shopify store can help.

A Facebook Shopify store is a store that runs on Facebook and is powered by Shopify.

Screenshot of Shopify Facebook Store (source).

With Shopify’s Lite $9/mo plan, you can add a store to your Facebook page and start selling on Facebook. By opening an online store like this, you can bypass the costs of building a store website from scratch and investing in pricey eCommerce solutions and products.

Now you might say,

“But Disha, why should I subscribe to Shopify when Facebook lets me add a store to my page already (via Facebook’s Shop app)?”

Well … because when you sell via Shopify, you’ll get all the goodness of Shopify including:

- The ability to sell unlimited products

- Support for 70+ payment gateways

- Orders and shipping management (via Shopify’s ultra-intuitive dashboard)

- Secure and responsive checkout experience

- Sales tracking and reporting

- Global tax and currency support

And much more.

Besides, the Facebook Store App costs $19.9/mo and the setup/configuration process is not so good either (especially when you compare it to Shopify’s slick user experience).

And in addition to Facebook, Shopify Lite also gives you access to Shopify’s ‘Buy Button’. With this feature, you can add a buy button to a host of places, for example, your website. So if you run a blog and would like to enable your readers to buy from it, Shopify Lite covers you.

Let’s now see how a Facebook Shopify store looks like.

BestSelf.co runs a great Shopify Facebook store. Below, you can see how BestSelf.co displays its store products beautifully on its Facebook store.

Putting your product for sale on (or via) Facebook weaves a lot of means of engagement into the purchase process.

For example, when a Facebook user clicks on any of your products, they can 1) like it, 2) share it with their friends, 3) save it for later, and 4) leave comments about any product or buying questions they might have.

Now think about it – if these products were on your store, most of these activities would need the users to sign up. But inside Facebook, they’re already logged in to their Facebook accounts!

Also, they can add the product to their carts too. For completing the rest of the checkout process, you can either bring the visitor to your website or store (if you have one) or simply let the users complete the checkout via Facebook itself.

BestSelfCo, for instance, takes visitors to its website for completing the purchase.

But Ian Atkins, founder of YourStandingDesk.com uses Shopify to run his Facebook store and prefers users to complete the purchase through his Facebook shop.

(In your case too, you’ll most probably prefer to do the checkout process via Facebook itself.)

Here’s another example from Master & Dynamic:

To find more Facebook Shopify store examples, check out Shopify’s customer showcase.

Now that you understand what a Shopify Facebook store looks like, let’s quickly go over the steps you can use to create your Facebook store.

To create a Facebook store with Shopify, you’ll first have to create a Facebook business page. It’s to this page that you’ll add a shop section to. So if you don’t have a Facebook page yet, create one now.

(Ideally, you should not only have a page ready but also have a few 100 followers on it before adding a store to it. This way, you’ll have an engaged audience to market to – right from day 1!)

With that tip, we’re ready to start building the store.

Step #1: Visit Shopify’s pricing page and click on the ‘Visit the Shopify Lite Plan’.

Step #2: Connect your Shopify account to your Facebook page

Step #3: Add products to your Facebook shop via Shopify

For details on each step, please visit the original post. This post is written by Disha Sharma and originally appear on BuildThis.

While Shopify’s Lite plan is a good and affordable way to break into online selling, I won’t recommend it as your ultimate online selling platform.

It’s ideal when starting out — but eventually — you should start a proper online store with a solution like Shopify … and use your Shopify Facebook shop as an added sales channel, and not as your primary store. (By the way, all Shopify plans include the Facebook sales channel, so you won’t need to purchase an addon or anything.)