How to move from selling on Instagram to setting up your online store

Many people have started their businesses through Instagram and other social networks. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, it is actually a great way to get started in online sales, as it allows us to validate our business model and our own products before making the move to a professional eCommerce.

This post is aimed at you, who have already started to handle a certain volume of orders, and you realize that a system based on direct messages and payments via Bizum… is not the most agile in the world. In short, you start to go a little crazy with so many interactions, separating commercial ones from social engagement.

It is time to professionalize your business and we are going to tell you how. Are you ready?

Before getting into how to move from Instagram to eCommerce, it is worth doing a brief review of why Meta’s network is not the best option for running a business.

Social networks are increasingly better integrated with eCommerce, but they are not designed as sales platforms. They are great for attracting traffic and customers, but when it comes to conversion they fall short.

First of all, because they do not allow task automation; everything has to be done manually. This implies a lot of time and, potentially, many more errors than those that could be made by a tested platform prepared to handle a large volume of orders.

This leads to the second critical point: the ability to scale the business. From a certain number of orders received, and no matter how methodical you are, the system becomes unmanageable. This can lead to die of success or, simply, to be unable to grow. You will reach your ceiling sooner rather than later.

And of course, the fact that you are working with a platform that is not a digital store means that certain eCommerce standards are not met, especially when it comes to user experience. There are no onboarding emails, customer accounts, segmentation, automatic shipment tracking…

Last but not least, I would highlight two situations: first is that you are working with a social network, which implies, in the eyes of the user, that they are not buying from a professional store, with the impact this has on their trust.

In addition, Instagram is a third-party platform and no one can be sure that, at any moment, they may change their conditions or that any incident may occur that suspends your account and, with it, your business.

Let’s then look at what opening an eCommerce brings us, even if we are already selling on Instagram or on any other social network.

The first thing is that, thanks to the automation of processes such as order reception and payments, we will be able to sell 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: you will always be available to your customers. This is an important leap at a business level.

With your eCommerce, you will have full control of the database and your customers. This allows you, on the one hand, to be legally covered and, on the other, to design more sophisticated strategies, efficiently segment your actions and be able to act on the life cycle of your customers.

Also, as we mentioned earlier, it is much more professional in terms of dealing with the customer. The experience changes a lot when they can interact with a store, browse categories, search for products, view complete product pages… not to mention a much more refined purchase and after-sales process than an exchange of private messages through a social platform.

At a marketing level, having your own store is much more versatile. For example, it will allow us to generate organic traffic to your website, and you will be able to run campaigns inside and outside Meta, including Google Ads or Shopping (which also has its free option).

Once you have made the decision to move to eCommerce, you need to follow several steps.

The first is the most important one: choosing your platform. You need to find one that combines:

Once the decision has been made and the account has been created on the platform of your choice, it is time to start uploading your products. Each system is different, so it will depend on who you are working with. At Oleoshop it is a very simple process, so depending on the depth of your catalog, you will be able to have everything uploaded in quite a short time.

For each product include:

Now all that remains is to configure the payment methods, and you can choose from several options. Card payment is always a good option, but Paypal or Bizum are also very popular.

We are practically done. You just need to configure shipping and logistics. It is important that you define the areas you will ship to (and those you will not), the prices, and delivery times.

With this, you could already start selling in your own store.

I would like to insist on something important: your eCommerce may not be perfect at the beginning, but you will see how you improve it little by little. It is a process of constant optimization that will make you better over time.

What I mean is that you should not wait to have everything perfect: go to market and work “hot”.

Of course not. That would be a very serious mistake. What we propose is that you use each channel for what it is most efficient at. Instagram is an open window for customer acquisition for your business and, if you are already using it today, you have a community that already knows your brand. That is very valuable.

But, by opening an online store, that community will have a much more effective sales channel. So we will continue using Meta to capture potential customers, but we will migrate conversion to our online store.

In addition, do not forget that Meta allows to upload our store’s catalog to its platform, so in some way they themselves are validating this “hybrid” way of selling online.

Do not think about it any longer and take your brand to compete seriously. If the investment worries, Oleoshop offers 14 days of a completely free trial and we have plans that fit your business volume very closely.