You are here because you have an existing business and you want to explore the online market be for expanding or because you are forced because of the pandemic creating the buy online now.
In this article I will give you the tools that i use and for my clients. And a little discuss about each tool or services so you understand.
You have your facebook page already, people message you for orders, you are selling in fb groups meant for your industries, you are selling also in facebook market and in other social media like instagram, tiktok and even in youtube. Great until you either of the two happens. Too much order and facebook or instagram suddenly banneds your page, or restricts some functions.
For the order problem, this is a question of handlings the recording and tracking which order is for whom, simple manageable, up to a certain level. More recording and tracking will eat up you time because you have to match it. Keep this in mind.
For facebook, instagram and others, dont get me wrong you have to have this as they are your marketing tool it's where the people are, this is how you can engage with them. You got to have these social media outlets but this is not your main site. The problem people think having facebook is enough, this is because they dont see what is the use of facebook for them, so tend to call their fb page as their main site. This is when they get locked in and might hit the previous problem. Worst all of a sudden some facebook restrictions and stuff and your business is not affected.
It's either your experiencing both or either or you starting to feel that you might get into this problems and is trying to look for a solution.
You know the solution already but didnt cared because you can manage things when it started or perhaps budget restrictions when you started or for those big ones, the physical shop is ok.
So whats the solution? get a website, this is your main online store, you have full control over it. Facebook and other social media outlets are for marketing to promote your product or service and bring those interested to your website. Think for a moment, you want sell a product to someone, so you post something, you can sponsor it if you want, anyway granting that target person you want to sell your new product already liked your page, check the person's number of friends and how many other pages the person liked, all of them posting also, so the target person's wall feed is filled with all of these post. Can your target market see your new product release or your promo? Moving on, so you say if they want to order from us then they go to our fb page, yes, where is the list of your products with prices? whats the on going promo? remember facebook is not designed for be ecommerce, its for socializing, thats why it falls under the category social media network and not ecommerce. So what happen is visitors will message you and ask the same question over again which you can address with a fb faq in the messenger. Then you start taking orders via messenger and trace with your bank account and match it and check again for delivery. Did i mentioned this earlier? so we are looping right.
Finally! so we agree, and you will build your website
