Facebook & Instagram feed is a way for you to take your WP EasyCart system and build an online catalog and ads to sell on Facebook & Instagram. With this extension, you Facebook will dynamically pull your products into its catalog system for you, giving you the opportunity to have scrolling Facebook & Instagram posts that allow customers to click ‘Shop Now’ and visit your website to purchase. This extension provides several ways to get that feed into Facebook’s business system.
4 Part Tutorial Video - Click Here!
We have a full 4 part series of videos to help you install pixels, plugin, create catalogs, and create ads!
Download and Installing an EasyCart Extension
First, you must install all EasyCart extensions as new plugins. This is a very easy task with WordPress and we have a short guide here to get you started. Click Here to learn how to install a WordPress plugin and EasyCart Premium extensions.
Facebook Business Account
The first step to selling on Facebook & Instagram is to build a Facebook Business account. Please visit: https://business.facebook.com/ and create your business account.
Once you login, familiarize yourself with their menu at the top left. You will be creating a catalog of products, connecting it to your EasyCart system, and building and monitoring ads from this Business account.
Setup Facebook Pixel
Facebook pixels track user events on your website and EasyCart system. This is a necessary step to ensure you get the best possible ad performance and tracking. Setting this up first is a good step to take.
- Navigate to the Pixels section in Facebook Business manager and create a Facebook Pixel.
- For general page tracking, we recommend the Official Facebook Pixel Tracking plugin.
- For ecommerce tracking of transactions, we recommend you install your Facebook Pixel ID in EasyCart settings. Simply open WordPress admin -> WP EasyCart -> Settings -> Third Party and you can enter your Pixel ID.
At this point, you should have Facebook tracking page clicks and also ecommerce transactions so that you can see them show in your Facebook Business Analytics.
Creating your Facebook Catalog
The Facebook & Instagram extension is designed to feed your Facebook catalog with products from your WP EasyCart system. You will link with a dynamic feed your site to Facebook.
First, will create a new catalog. Select E-Commerce when presented with the following catalog type.
Next, you are going to be asked what type of Configuration, and you will select ‘Upload Product Info’. You can select a personal or custom owner, we just select a Personal owner, and then give it a name, such as ‘My EasyCart Catalog’.
Configuring your Catalog to use Data Sources
Now that you have a catalog, we want to add a new Data Source. This is where we will point Facebook to use your dynamic EasyCart feed. Go to the Product Data Sources -> Add Data Source section and you will create a new Data source. You will use ‘Use Data Feeds‘ method so that Facebook will pull from your website using the provided Data Feed we made.
Next you will set a schedule. You can either upload it once if you make a custom CSV, or you can select ‘Set a Schedule‘ and copy/paste your Facebook Feed URL. Your custom feed can be found in our WP EasyCart -> Settings -> Third Party facebook feed. If you wanted to, we provide a manual download button to get a CSV file and customize it in mass or to upload manually one time, but most of the time, it’s easier to just connect to your feed URL.
Copy and Paste your Feed URL here on Facebook and establish the appropriate schedule to get new products. Typically a one day schedule is plenty, but you can do a feed lookup every hour if you wanted to. You can also upload Once on this panel if you wanted to provide a custom feed using our Download CSV File.
Once finished, click ‘Start Upload‘ and it will begin grabbing your products from your website using this URL. Select ‘Done‘ when finished.
Viewing Facebook Products
That’s It! You should see all your WP EasyCart products loaded into Facebook, ready for Facebook & Instagram ads to be constructed using your dynamic feed data. In this example, you can see all of our demo products were found and loaded into Facebook under the Products section.
At this point, you can click ‘Advertise Product Set’ or the ‘Create Ad‘ button and begin advertising through Facebook & Instagram. You can also select Product Sets and begin constructing product sets to your products as needed if you wanted to break them into groups or smaller sets of products. Please consult Facebook on how to build ads and manage ads from this point forward.
Customizing your Product Data Feed
By default, we pull in your product titles, prices, descriptions, and stock information, but Facebook does allow you to segment even further product information and we offer you a very customizable way to do this.
If you have the Facebook & Instagram extension installed in your Premium edition, you can edit any product and scroll to the bottom to find a Facebook panel that gives you customization on each product.
For each product, you can customize the product title, description, condition, currency code, url, facebook image, and manufacturer. The facebook image is best provided as a 600px by 600px square image. If you do not provide a square image on your product image 1, then you may need to photoshop or customize a set of graphics just for this ad platform.
Optional Facebook Options
Facebook Age Group, Item Color, Item Gender, and Google Category are optional, however, the more specific you can give here, the better Facebook & Instagram can display your ads to proper customers during marketing campaigns. Leave these fields blank if you do not use them or they do not apply, but it is always a good idea to add a google category to every product. This way your Facebook feed will not get any warnings on upload.
Google Categories – This is an especially good option to fill in for each product. Here is a full list from Google Product Categories. Lookup the best appropriate category and enter the Category ID here.
For Example: 5082 – Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Cat Supplies > Cat Apparel
In this example, you will enter 5082 to the Google category.
