re you looking to grow your Shopify store? Expand your reach with Shopify’s Sales Channels:
One of the biggest benefits Shopify offers is the convenient access it gives you to other sales channels. Sales channels represent platforms (websites or marketplaces) where you can sell your products.
How will using sales channels benefit me?
By connecting all your sales channels with Shopify, you can keep track of stock, manage products, customers, and orders, all on your Shopify dashboard.
Marketplaces are invaluable to online sellers. It allows you to skip the tedious process of researching and reaching customers by reaching them, where they already purchase their products online.
Let’s take a look at the most popular sales channels Shopify has to offer:
Facebook:
Social media giant turned marketplace, Facebook is one of the biggest and most important channels to promote your products through.
Facebook Marketplace is a bustling community of eager buyers who are itching to purchase products. Combining this potential huge customer-base with Facebook’s built-in targeted marketing and simple product categorization, this marketplace is your golden ticket to eCommerce success.
Thanks to Shopify’s sales channel integration, you can seamlessly promote and sell your Shopify products straight from the Shop tab on your store's Facebook page.
After connecting Shopify with Facebook as a sales channel, you gain access to the following helpful perks:
- Promote audience-growing advertisements on Facebook to increase the traffic to your online store.
- Facebooks’ built-in dynamic advertisement targeting can hyper-boost your conversion rates, helping customers discover new products from your store.
- Facebook posts can make your existing Facebook followers aware of product promotions or new stock
Requirements:
In order to be eligible to use Facebook as a sales channel, your Shopify store needs to meet a few simple requirements:
- Your Shopify store needs to be using a Facebook-supported currency. Find a list of supported currencies here.
- Your Business Facebook page needs to needs to be using the Shopping template.
- You need a valid customer email (This can be changed in Shopify’s General Settings)
Facebook Messenger
Messenger might seem like Facebook’s awkward little brother, but surprisingly, it’s been making enormous waves in the world of eCommerce.
Matching the intimate 1-on-1 communication it offers, gives customers a feeling of trust while talking to vendors.
Shopify released a Messenger plugin, which allows customers to use Messenger for the whole purchasing process. This allows your customers to simply and easily buy products through only a chat window!
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Amazon
Arguably the biggest eCommerce platform worldwide, Amazon is a powerful sales channel that is impossible to ignore. Using this sales channel allows you to keep track of both Shopify and Amazon sales.
According to research, 55% of customers start their search for a product on Amazon, even beating search engines like Google.
It’s clear to see that utilizing Amazon as a sales channel, can have unthinkably huge benefits for your online business.
Using Amazon as a sales channel will also allow you to:
- Add listings for products new to Amazon
- Manage and create offers for existing Amazon products
- Link your existing Amazon limits to your Shopify account
- Receive notifications on your Shopify dashboard about Amazon orders.
Regarded as one of the world’s most popular social media platforms (right behind its big brother Facebook) – Instagram is the perfect place to boost your audience engagements.
Instagram puts your products on a pedestal, showcasing high-quality images of your stock to charm and guide your customers back to your Shopify store.
Instagram has some enticing statistics to enthrall online shop owners, with 75% of users taking action after viewing a post.
In other words, Instagram is a platform that drives action, turning passions into purchases.
Instagram’s sales channel allows owners to add shopping tags to image posts that link directly to Shopify product pages, allowing them to check out inside of the Instagram app.
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Buy Button
The Buy Button is an extremely flexible tool that does exactly what says. Its simple name might be deceiving, as it functions as much more than simply just a button. This tool allows you to add fully-fledged eCommerce functionality to your existing websites.
This button can redirect website visitors to products, collections, or straight to a checkout page in your Shopify store.
The button is also fully customizable, to fit the look and feel of your website perfectly.
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Wholesale Channel
Shopify’s Wholesale sales channel was first released in 2017, to improve Shopify’s wholesale options. This wholesale channel is based on your current existing store, with the same products, order data, and customer data. The wholesale store is accessible separately with its own theme. This page is password-protected, so customers are invited to join the wholesale channel and are given a group, dictating pricing, and other variables.
The wholesale channel is engineered around price lists, allowing you to set prices for specific customer groups. Pricing logic can also be applied against products and collections with customer tags. Both of these features allow the existence of tiered pricing and customer-specific pricing.
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Once you’ve got your Shopify store up and running, you need to be active about promoting and putting your products out there.
The sales channels we highlighted here take merely a few minutes to set up – but their impact is enormous. These sales channels will help you broaden your store’s horizons and reach new heights.
