Resources for Building Your Facebook Storefront

11.05.2012
As giant retailers such as Gamestop, JC Penney, and Nordstrom opened--and quickly shuttered--Facebook storefronts over the past six months, many analysts declared Facebook's e-commerce effort to be a failure. People come to Facebook to catch up with family and friends, they reasoned, not to shop for goods and services.

But recently published statistics from e-commerce software developer Ecwid indicate that either those analysts' conclusions were premature, or commerce is merely better suited to smaller businesses right now. Among its more than 35,000 clients that run both stand-alone online stores and storefronts, Ecwid reports that nearly 18 percent of those clients' Q1 2012 revenues were generated by their Facebook stores. Meanwhile, Wishpond, another company focused on helping retailers build Facebook storefronts, recently reported an uptick in interest in its products following the debut of the Facebook Timeline profile earlier this year. If Gamestop, JC Penney, and Nordstrom had held on for just a few more months, would they also have seen an increase in their Facebook store sales?

Building a Facebook storefront is relatively inexpensive--or even free, if you already have a fan page and a account--so small businesses with the patience to stick it out for a few months might wish to give it a shot. Here's a look at some of the related products and services on the market, most of which promise seamless integration between your online store, your inventory-management software, and your Facebook page.

Since syncs items in your online store and in your Facebook store, you don't have to keep separate inventory counts for each platform. This is a great feature for retailers with limited stock. The service is free for up to 100 SKUs.

Upgrade to the Silver program, which costs $17 per month, and you can sell up to 20,000 SKUs. You can also market your business by offering discount coupons, provide protected downloads for e-goods, run affiliate programs, use your own custom domain name for your storefront, run APIs (application program interfaces) to connect your store to other programs, and more.