Here in Canada (and I assume everywhere) marketing via social media is increasingly popular, and our users are interested in this. I have been trying to experiment using my own farm and facebook page to learn options. Here is what I’ve learned, and I wonder if we might make this easier?
It has been possible in fb classic view (which is being sunset) to add a ‘shop now’ action button to a fb page. We have been suggesting this to our OFN users in Canada. OFN users could use this button and link it to their openfoodnetwork shop page. All was good. Sales increased.
Now, FB is gradually sunsetting classic view and moving to ‘pages’ view - which has some advantages… BUT it is no longer possible to do the above action button in ‘pages’ (at least I can’t figure how). I think this is all part of Mega’s move to use both fb and instagram for sales and capture mucho $$$$
Instead of the ‘shop now’ button, in the new ‘pages’ view, an account holder needs to setup a fb ‘store’. And they look awfully nice! There are 3 checkout possibilities in a fb store: checkout on facebook (so full immersion to take payments, process orders, and sell on the fb app for a percentage), checkout with another gateway (there is a lengthy list of e-commerce platforms integrated with fb to do this - wish we were here), or checkout on the fb account owner’s own e-commerce store.
So I tried to create a fb store where at checkout the customer is taken to my OFN store. BUT - for this option, fb wants to verify that the fb account holder is the owner of the e-commerce-enabled website. And of course, our users cannot access and verify the openfoodnetwork domain DNS records to do this.
So with the new ‘pages’ system in fb, the only option for our users is to list the url for their OFN storefront is in their fb profile, and then each time they make a fb post to promote sales they need to say ‘shop link in profile’ … And visitors need to do the extra clicks.
I know its OK - but gosh would it ever be nice to enable something with less friction. I am certainly not a Meta fan 
but I know first hand the power of using fb to increase my shop sales. And I’m looking to keep doing that. Does anyone have thoughts on options?