Beginning April 24, 2024, your shop is unsupported unless you update your checkout method to On Facebook and Instagram. New shops must use the checkout method On Facebook and Instagram. If your shop doesn't use the checkout method On Facebook and Instagram you will also lose access to features including organic product tagging in posts and new custom and lookalike audiences derived from people who visited the shop. Existing product tags on your organic posts are hidden from people. (The posts themselves are otherwise unaffected. Only the product tags are no longer visible).
If you're looking to to take action to "fix" a previously set up shop or set up a new shop, you've come to the right place.
While we always try to step you through third-party integrations as much as we can, Meta and Google are notorious for changing their user interface and functionality constantly. It's a good idea to double-check this process with Meta's documentation to be sure something hasn't changed.
You can find their article outlining the process to change your existing checkout method here. And you can find their article outlining the process to set up a new shop for the first time here. In some cases, you may need to use their search function at the top of the aforementioned pages to find specific details.
Connecting the Run Free Project to Facebook & Instagram
You'll be setting up a data feed for your Meta Commerce shop. The URL for your feed is:
https://[YOUR DOMAIN]/api/export/facebook-market.csv
Replace [YourDomain] with your shop's URL, e.g. shop.yoursite.com (or yoursite.com if you host your website on Run Free in addition to your eComm store)
No username or password is required.
If you are new to Facebook/Instagram Data Feeds, follow these steps to continue.
Considerations before you begin:
If you don’t have a Facebook business Page or catalog yet you can create both when you set up your shop.
If you want to make your shop visible on Instagram, you’ll also need an Instagram business account. Your business portfolio must own the Instagram business account that it’s connected to. If you only want to sell using a shop on Instagram, you don't need to create or provide a Facebook business Page when creating your shop in Commerce Manager.
To set up your shop on Facebook and/or Instagram:
Go to their Get Started Page at https://www.facebook.com/business/shops. Select Get started, Create a shop then Get started.
Select I don’t use these platforms then Next
If prompted, select Check Out on Facebook and Instagram, then click Next
If you want to sell on a Facebook business Page, choose your Page or create a new one. If you want to sell on Instagram, select your Instagram business account. Click Next
Select your business portfolio or create a new one. Click Next
Meta will create a catalog for you automatically in Commerce Manager called “Items for (name and ID of your Page)”. You can add your feed from Run Free later when you’ve finished setting up your shop.
Look over your shop details, review and agree to the Seller Agreement and click Finish setup to complete creating your shop
Once your shop is approved and published, your shop will also display a storefront footer that shows your shop’s name, a featured image, customer ratings, shipping and pay securely details, and the Follow and Shop all products action buttons. Note: The featured image automatically shows the most recent organic posts you’ve uploaded to your shop, which is optimized for site performance.
Once your Shop is setup, continue to import your feed via the Commerce Manager. Under "Catalogs" click "Add Catalog"
For "Select Type" use "ecommerce" and "Products"
Select "Upload Product Info" and give your feed a recognizable name.
Click to "View Catalog" then proceed to the "Data Sources" link.
Select "Data Feed" and click "Next"
Select that you are "Ready" and click "Next"
Enter your store's feed URL (described at the beginning of this section) replacing the highlighted information. At this time you do not need to enter a username and password. Make sure not to schedule updates more than once a day in order to ensure your feed does not get slowed or blocked by Meta, and set the update to occur early in the morning.
Appropriately name the data feed and click the "Upload" button.
The upload could take some time depending on the size of your completed product catalog in Run Free. You can view your feed in CSV format by simply typing your feed URL into a browser window
A report of "Issues" will be created letting you know different ways you can improve your product catalog. These are not issues from the Run Free Project, they are issues with data that was provided to the platform that gets modified on our side and will update and improve with each night's data feed.
Once completed you can manage all of your products and how they display within Meta Commerce. Your shop information and product availability will be updated nightly.
If you have questions about this process, review Meta's documentation first. If you can't find an answer there, feel free to reach out to the Run Free Project support team using the chat box in the bottom right corner of this page (or any page associated with the Run Free Project).
IMPORTANT!!
As of April 24, 2024, the Meta Commerce changes we mentioned previously also disabled our ability to point users who click on items within Facebook or Instagram to redirect to your eCommerce site to check out. Instead, they must check out within Facebook or Instagram. The downside to this "new" feature of Meta's is that we can't see the purchase happen, so we can't update the POS (and Meta doesn't have this capability at all), so you'll need to manually account for inventory changes resulting from customer purchases within Facebook or Instagram in your POS to maintain accurate inventory and accounting.