Facebook ads for your Shopify store, in the right order

The store is live, the products have photos, and the first order came from a friend. Now you want strangers, and Facebook ads for your Shopify store are the obvious next step.

The setup lives in two places. Shopify's Facebook & Instagram sales channel connects the store to Meta: it syncs your products to a catalogue and installs the pixel that reports what visitors do. The ads are made, paid for and read in Meta's Ads Manager.

The order matters, because each step needs the one before it. Accounts first, then the channel, then data sharing, then the first campaign.

What you need before you connect anything

Shopify's page on the channel's requirements lists them. Your online store cannot be in private mode, and the sender email of your store has to be a valid address.

On the Meta side you need a Facebook account and a published Facebook Page for the business. The Page has to be connected to a business portfolio, and your personal account needs full control of both the portfolio and the Page.

You also need an ad account inside that portfolio before you can create a campaign. If you have never run ads from a personal ad account, add one to the portfolio first. To sell on Instagram as well, the Instagram account has to be a professional account linked to the same Page.

Connect the store through Shopify's Facebook & Instagram channel

Shopify's help page for the channel says it is free to use with all Shopify plans, subject to store eligibility. It installs as a sales channel, so after setup you find it under Sales channels in your admin, not under apps.

Shopify's setup guide runs the same way on desktop. Go to Settings, then Sales channels, open the Shopify App Store and search for Facebook. Add the channel, start setup on the feature you want first, connect your Facebook account and the assets it asks for, accept the terms and finish.

The channel keeps one product catalogue for Facebook Shop, Instagram Shopping and your ads. Hide a product from the channel and it leaves all three. Every product also goes through Meta's review, and one that breaks Meta's policies can be removed.

If the Page you want is not offered, check which portfolio owns it. Shopify says the portfolio you connect must be the owner of the Page during setup, or the Page is not listed.

Set up the Facebook ads pixel in Shopify

The Meta pixel is the code that tells Meta what people do on your store after they see an ad. In Shopify you add it through the channel's data-sharing settings, where Shopify's page on Facebook data sharing offers three levels.

• Standard uses only the pixel in the visitor's browser, which a browser ad blocker can stop.
• Enhanced adds Meta's Conversions API, which sends the purchase event from Shopify's servers to Meta's, along with the customer's name, location, email and phone number for matching.
• Maximum uses the same two and adds Meta's latest advertising technology, according to Shopify.

Meta's page on the Conversions API says server events are less affected than the pixel by browser loading errors, connectivity issues and ad blockers. Sharing more customer data is your choice, and Shopify asks you to say so in your store's privacy policy.

Once connected, the pixel tracks seven events on its own: PageView, ViewContent, Search, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, AddPaymentInfo and Purchase. Purchase is the one a sales campaign is built around.

One trap catches stores that tried this before. If pixel code was ever pasted into your theme, Shopify's page on the Meta pixel says to delete it from `theme.liquid`, or the store runs two pixels and reports duplicate or wrong data.

What Shopify does and what stays in Ads Manager

Shopify's side covers the catalogue, the pixel and the data. For making ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network, Shopify's marketing page sends you to Meta's Ads Manager.

The catalogue is what Ads Manager borrows from Shopify. Shopify names three kinds of ad that use it: audience building ads to bring new visitors, dynamic retargeting ads that show people products from your store, and Page posts for the people who already follow you.

Ads Manager is also where the money goes in, where the budget is set and where results are read. Settle how much to spend each day before you build the campaign.

Shopify adds one condition that sits outside both tools. Meta scores your business portfolio on feedback from buyers about delivery speed, product quality and service, and a poor score can mean Meta shows your ads less often.

How to create Facebook ads for a Shopify store

How to create Facebook ads for a Shopify store, once the channel is connected: open Ads Manager in the ad account inside your portfolio, aim the campaign at the purchases your pixel reports, and add ads made for the placements you will run, with your catalogue behind them if you want dynamic ads.

Meta's page on the pixel says it lets automatic bidding reach people more likely to take an action you care about, such as a purchase. The ads are the part no setting does for you. A product photo on white is a start, but a set of ads that each make a different case for the product gives Meta more to work with. Meta's own creative best practices are a short list worth following from the first ad.

Then leave it alone for a few days. Shopify's marketing page says to wait four to five days after launch before making changes, so there is enough data to decide on.

Where the setup stops helping

A correct pixel and a synced catalogue make the ads measurable. They do not make anyone buy. If people click and do not order, the reason is usually on the product page, the price or the offer, and why Facebook ads get clicks but no sales walks through that.

A new pixel also starts empty. Shopify says data appears in Ads Manager only after customers have been active on the store, so a new store has little for Meta to learn from at first.

Whether ads pay for a store your size is a separate question from how to set them up. Whether Facebook ads work for a small business is the honest place to start that one.

Making the ads once the store is connected

Once the store is connected, what is left every week is deciding what to run and making the ads for it. Nomi does that part for a store.

Nomi for ecommerce starts from your site: it reads your pages once and comes back with your brand, products and buyers as drafts you correct. Point it at a product and it plans the campaign, reads what your competitors run on Meta, writes the copy and makes the ads in the shapes Meta's placements take. You still run them in Ads Manager.