Shopify Archives - 80/20 Hustle

If you want to learn how to create a Facebook product catalog that syncs up with your Shopify store and save hours with Facebook and Shopify’s support team, give this post a read.

Setting up a Facebook Product Feed with your Shopify store has some pretty powerful benefits. Once you have your feed working, you can:

Run Dynamic Ads on Facebook
Tag your photos in Instagram (business accounts only)

This means you can scale up your marketing efforts and show only relevant products to your potential customers which means more efficient ad spending and higher return on ad spend.

Ready to get started? Let’s go.

Step 1: Install Flexify in your Shopify Store

Start by opening the admin of your Shopify store. Navigate to the Apps section and download the Flexify Facebook Product Feed App.

Essentially, this app will create an RSS feed for your products so that your Shopify Store and Facebook can communicate between each other.

That was easy, right?

Step 2: Create a Product Catalog within Facebook

I’m assuming that you already have a Facebook Business Manager Account so head on over to Business.Facebook.com and select the appropriate business manager.

Click the menu in the top-left hand corner to reveal the bigger menu and look for Catalogs.

Once you’re on the Catalogs page, click the Create Catalog button.

Under catalog type, select E-commerce.

You’ll be presented with a Drop Down menu, select your Business Manager name, give your feed a name and hit Create.

Step 3: Add your Product Feed

You’ll now want to add your products to this newly created catalog so go ahead and click “Add Products.”

Select the Use Data Feeds option. No sense in manually uploading it unless you’re only ever going to have the same products.

Under the setting, “How do you want to upload your data feed”, I select the “Set a Schedule Option.” This means that I can make sure Facebook has the latest product catalog hourly, daily or weekly.

For the Data Feed URL, head back to your Shopify store and open up the Flexify app. At the very top, you’ll find your RSS product feed. Copy that and paste it in the Data Feed URL field.

Username and Password is blank.

Choose your schedule. I have mine set to daily at 5 in the morning.

Name your data feed, make sure the correct currency is selected and hit the Start Upload button!

If all is set up correctly, you will see a progress bar like this one:

Once all 4 steps are done, just hit the blue Done button.

Step 4: Connect your Product Catalog to your Facebook Pixel

This step is super easy.

Hit the settings button in the top menu and then click “Connect Event Source.”

A pop-up will appear where you simply need to select the appropriate Pixel. This will allow you to properly run Facebook Dynamic Retargeting Ads since your product catalog will now be tied to your Pixel which is collecting data on every visitor including which products they’re looking at.

Troubleshooting & FAQs

If for some reason, you’re not seeing your Facebook Pixel, you will need to make sure your Business Manager has access to all the necessary assets under your Business Settings.

From there, click through the options on the left side such as Pages, Ad Accounts, Catalogs and Pixels and make sure you see the right assets.

Under Pages, you should see your business Facebook page.
Under ad accounts, you should see your business ad account for this particular brand.
Under catalogs, you should see your newly created catalog.
Under pixels, you should see your business pixel.

If you don’t see them, you need to add them or give yourself access.

Catalog is Owned by Shopify

If you see this, you need to delete the catalog and re-create it. You selected the wrong business in Step #2.

For some reason, there is no way to properly reassign the catalog to the correct business manager once you see this.

And if you click on Manage the Shopify business manager, you won’t be able to edit anything. It brings you to the original business.facebook.com page where you will see your actual Business Manager.

Hopefully that helps! Post up questions below if anything is unclear.

In case you haven’t visited your Discounts Section in your Shopify backend lately, Shopify quietly released a new kind of Discount Code:

Shopify Buy X Get Y Discounts

Until now, you’ve had to use an app to give customers this kind of deal.

Customers can now enter a coupon code during the checkout process to take advantage of the deal you have to offer.

With Shopify’s Buy X, Get Y discount code, you have two options as the seller:

Offer your customer a percentage off the deal item(s)
The deal item(s) is FREE

? There is no fixed price discount option.

Here is a screenshot in the admin view:

You must specify the quantity the customer needs to purchase as well as the specific products or collections.

You then need to specify the quantity as well as the products or collections the customer will receive at a discount or for free.

From the customer’s perspective, they need to add the necessary items and quantities to their cart before they can enter the coupon code and the discount takes effect.

That means they need to add the entire combination of items: what they need to buy at full price and then what they will receive at a discount or for free.

So if the deal is buy 3 items from Collection A and get a 4th item from Collection A for free, they need to add 4 items from Collection A and then apply the coupon code.

If they do not have the correct items in their cart, they will receive an error message that looks like this:

“Your cart does not meet the requirements for the XYZ discount code”

This is a bit problematic if you have any complicated offers since it doesn’t tell the customer what they are missing so my suggestion is to keep things simple.

Here are some potential ideas for this new discount code:

Buy 2 items from a Collection A and get a third item from Collection B for free
Buy any item in the store and get the second item for 50% (or any other discount)
Buy 3 of the same item and get the 4th free

Does the Shopify Buy X Get Y Discount Replace my Paid Upsell & BOGO Apps?

I think this new discount code a good option for anyone who has a new store and wants to get their feet wet with a BOGO offer WITHOUT having to purchase an app.

However, I think that dedicated Upsell Apps like the one from Bold Commerce and the Ultimate Special Offers app by Supple Apps are still much more powerful and offer a better (different) customer experience.

So the answer to that question is no and for a very simple reason: Shopify’s discount requires that the customer knows the coupon code and enters in the correct combination of items.

At the end of the day, this is simply another coupon code you can offer to your customers.

I think it’s a good option if you want to run a flash sale on certain items or offer a secret deal to VIP members. That’s what I would do at least.

With the Bold Upsell app for example, the customer experience is a little different.

The customer adds an item to their cart
The app will present the customer with the upsell offer (either immediately or during the checkout process)
The discount will automatically apply

So hopefully that brings you up to speed on Shopify’s new coupon code!

How to Create Facebook Product Catalog for Shopify Store: Start to Finish