Online selling has never been stronger in the Philippines. As quarantine restrictions came and disrupted how we do our shopping and acquire our basic needs, entrepreneurs have turned to the internet to sell their products and reach consumers who are stuck at home.
As one of the low-barrier entry points to online selling, Facebook Pages has served as a popular and effective platform for anyone to easily display, advertise, and sell their products.
As you grow your online business, however, the question starts to arise – should I have my own e-commerce website?
Here are a few things to consider when deciding to establish your own e-commerce website.
Branding
While Facebook allows you to flaunt your brand through a customized profile, there’s undoubtedly limits to how much you can flex your visual identity there. With your own e-commerce website, the sky is the limit to how you want to present yourself. Emphasize your brand colors, use graphics and images that match your identity, and, of course, have your very own domain name (i.e. your-store.com).
If your brand has become recognizable in the Facebook platform and you’ve always dreamt of customizing your look even more, then an e-commerce website could be for you. At ATeam, we’ll work with you to achieve the look you want, and even throw in a FREE domain name of your choice.
Shop and catalog management
Facebook Pages allows you to manage your shop catalog simply and effectively. For small businesses, this is often more than enough.
As your catalog grows, however, it becomes more complex to manage all your products. From creating new products to managing inventory, you might already be at a point where a customized workflow and more optimized tools will save you a lot of time. With ATeam’s e-commerce solution, you get features like importing your catalog from CSV files, a table view where you can easily update prices and stock levels for every item, and easy product categorization and variations.
Have you ever felt limited by what you can do on Facebook in terms of managing your store catalog? Then an e-commerce website might be the answer!
Order processing
Similar to managing shops, Facebook has the tools to allow you to process orders and transact with your customers. A simple Facebook Messenger conversation can often be sufficient to effectively complete an order.
However, if you’re dealing with more than five transactions per day, you might be spending too much of your precious time exchanging messages with your customers. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of inquiries and messages you need to respond to every day, it might be time to consider automating your order processing.
ATeam’s e-commerce solution allows you to seamlessly move an order from one status to another. It allows you to provide tracking numbers to your customers and automatically send it to their emails. Your customers will also be able to track their own orders through your website. Imagine the time you’ll be able to save!
Payment methods
Probably the biggest reason you would want to move from Facebook to your own e-commerce website is to allow your customers to choose payment methods that are otherwise not available. In the Philippines, Facebook shop transactions have no built-in payment processing options. Sellers have worked around this by using more traditional payment options such as bank transfers and GCash. These payment methods are then manually verified before processing the order.
While this method has worked for most, there are two big reasons you might want to expand your payment options. One is, despite the majority of Filipino shoppers preferring cash on delivery or GCash payments, you might be missing out on the many that actually prefer credit cards, Paypal, or other options.
The second reason is to save you time on manual verifications. With ATeam’s e-commerce website solution, we provide automatic payment processing for credit cards, Paypal, and GCash. Yes, even GCash payments can be automatically verified. So instead of your customer waiting for your confirmation, they automatically get an approval for the payment and you can go ahead and process the order for them.
Expand your payment options to save yourself time and reach a potential audience you might be missing out on.
Search Engine Optimization
While Facebook and other social media platforms open a world of opportunity when it comes to reaching customers, an e-commerce website provides another entry point for customers to find you. With 3.5 billion searches per day on Google alone, you’re surely missing a piece of the pie if your web presence isn’t optimized for search.
With your e-commerce website, you can optimize your content so the right customers find you with the right keywords. ATeam’s e-commerce website solution includes up to five custom pages and unlimited space for media that will help boost your search rank. Your website will also include a blog where you can create and post timely and updated content that help your customers better find you.
We also continuously guide you on how you can make your content more searchable and get your website to reach more people. After all, your success is our success.
Have you thought about moving your Facebook online business to your own e-commerce site? We can help you! For a minimum setup fee of P20,000 and a monthly recurring fee based on the volume of sales, we’ll have your e-commerce website up in no time!
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