Meta has recently made some changes to the Meta Shops experience for stores located in the EU and UK. These changes were previously announced in April, and are now being rolled out across all retailers.
The main change affecting you is that storefronts with collections are no longer shown directly on your Instagram and Facebook page. This means there’s no longer a ‘View store’ button visible on your Facebook page or Instagram account.
Shoppers can still see your products by clicking on the “Shop photo” button from your posts. They will also be able to view other products you are stocking (“More from this shop”) based on personalised recommendations.
Catalog products are still viewable when tagged in posts and used in ads, and as such it’s now more important to utilise these features as a retailer on Facebook and Instagram.
What should you do next?
To ensure shoppers can still discover your products, we strongly recommend taking the following steps in your Meta Commerce Manager.
Tag products in your posts
Now that the main call to action on your Facebook page or Instagram profile is no longer the ‘View shop’ button, tagging products is the main way to get organic traffic to your product listings.
You can add tags to new posts by choosing ‘Tag products’ after you’ve selected the image you want to upload. Importantly, you can also tag products in previously uploaded posts. Simply press Edit on your existing image posts, and a ‘Tag’ button will appear.
Send products in WhatsApp and Messenger conversations
Another way to use the products in your catalog is in Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp Business. This is a great way to personalise the shopping experience by helping potential customers find the products they need.
Once your catalog is set up, you can share products from your catalog in a single tap in chat threads.
Running ads
Once NearSt has set up your product catalog in Meta Commerce, it is easy to start running dynamic product ads on Facebook and Instagram. Head over to the Meta Ads Manager, create a new campaign and choose ‘Sales’ as your Campaign Objective. Meta will then automatically offer to use the products in your catalog as the basis for your ads.
Meta now also supports AI-powered Advantage+ shopping campaigns which can be powered by the products in your catalog.
Stores in the United States
Stores in the US are still able to show a storefront with collections and a “View store” button in Instagram and Facebook, as long as they choose to enable orders through Meta’s built-in checkout flow.
More resources
Read more about the changes Meta has made for each market in the Facebook Business Help Center.
