Despite a recent report in Bloomberg that several large chains like Gamestop to J.C.Penney are shutting their Facebook Stores there is still a lot of money to be made by opening a store in Facebook. Selling in Facebook is quite different from selling in eBay or Amazon. It is a "Social" experience and this needs to be exploited.
My focus in this blog post is on the tools available to set up shop in Facebook and other Social Media channels. Some of these provide platforms, products and services beyond just setting up shop in Facebook.
These products have some or all of the following features:
- Store on Facebook
- Easy installation and set up
- Full store functionality
- Customizable display banner and Storefront Custom Header
- Product search and browsing
- Animated product carousels
- Payment gateway choices and Checkout functionality
- Account creation and management
- Orders and returns via Facebook
- Product ratings and reviews
- Product sorting and filtering
- Full product merchandising
- Pre Configured Product Social Share (Facebook & Twitter)
- Choose Your Storefront Template from a bunch of them
- Twitter Badge On Your Storefront
- Feature/Highlight Product
- Product Import from existing eCommerce sites
- Clone Storefronts to multiple business pages (Affiliate Marketing)
- Customize Your Buy Now Button
- Mirrored on multiple sites
- Detailed Analytics
You need to identify which of these are important to you and accordingly choose a product.
These tools and services are listed here in the order of Alexa ranks these sites have, not a definite indicator of quality but to some extent the popularity.
Volusion - Alexa Rank is 3370
Volusion offers a free trial and has monthly subscriptions starting at $19 for 100 products to $99 for 5000 products. Offers many templates, unlimited product options, ability to compare products
SocialShop 2 - (a product from BigCommerce) - Alexa Rank is 5800
It Free to try for 15-days, but subsequently monthly subscriptions range from $24.95 for 100 Products to $299.95 for Unlimited Products.
Facebook has a review on BigCommerce.
It's free. It can be easily integrated to any existing site in minutes and can be mirrored on many sites at the same time. I not only allows to run your own store on Facebook but also on sites like mySpace and many others.
ECWID
3dcart - Alexa Rank is 15K
If you already have an ecommerce site created using 3dcart, you can quickly import it into Facebook.
Payvment - Alexa Rank is 27K
Payvment engages shoppers through Polls. Visitors can also explore products from others in their Taste Graph. Payvment has a free option for unlimited products, but the paid subscriptions provide advance features for analytics and start at $29.95 a month.
Sortprice - Alexa Rank is 61K
Sortprice has built approximately 1000 Facebook stores and are currently offering it for free as part of their services. Many merchants, both big and small are taking advantage of this and are successfully building social shopping communities right on Facebook.
Instantestore - Alexa Rank 67K
Allows you to set up an ecommerce site and link it to your Facebook page. Monthly subscriptions start at $14.97 after a 30-day free trial.
ShopTab - Alexa Rank is 82K
Wishpond - Alexa Rank is 94K
Wishpond is free for up to 100 products. The monthly subscription for 5000 products is $9 and $19 for 100,000 products. They support more than 150 currencies. Wishpond allows Social promotions, and allows import of your products from your existing ecommerce site. It also provides detailed analytics.
Beetailer - Alexa Rank is 97K
Beetailer helps you import your current online store into Facebook. You can also create a Facebook store from scratch. It has a Free option for up to 10 Products. Monthly subscriptions vary from $50 for 500 products to $300 for 10,000 products.
TabJuice - Alexa Rank is 192K
It's FREE and you can create a Branded Facebook Storefront in minutes. It allows you to accept from popular payment gateways like Paypal and Authorize.net.
StorefrontSocial - Alexa Rank is 219K
It has tfeatures like Social Share, Category Filter, Product Search, Buy Now! Facebook Store Templates, Highlight/Feature Items, International Support, Product Import. Pricing varies from a low $9.95 a month for 50 products to $129.95 for 1000 products.
Lunarmods - Alexa Rank is 1.2M
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If you have experience using any of these platforms, would like to read your experiences.