ReadyCMS greets Facebook Shop Catalog

In the latest update, we tackled the synergy between Facebook's Catalog shop and ReadyCMS.

To enhance SEO functionality, we introduced META TAGS with the purpose to help describe the products. With this functionality, Google, Facebook, and other services that use web crawlers for collecting data can know how much the product costs, which category it belongs to, etc.

As the biggest social network in the world, Facebook offers a fantastic targeted advertising platform. If you have ever used Facebook for your website/company marketing needs, you were dealing with Facebook Catalog.

Why Facebook Catalog is important?

Facebook Catalog is a container that holds information about the items you want to advertise or sell across Facebook and Instagram. It has the same functionalities as a regular webshop - you can add products, and product details, choose languages and assign permissions to different users. You can also create different kinds of ads and campaigns.

How to add products to Facebook Catalog

There are three ways to add products to your shop:

1. Add items manually
   Add items one by one using a form.
2. Import (Bulk upload)
   Use a spreadsheet file in CSV, TSV, or XML format to upload multiple items.
3. By using Facebook Pixel
   The Pixel can add new items to your catalog and update inventory details automatically from your website.

How ReadyCMS can help you import products automatically

After you connect your pixel as a data source, you don't need to update your catalog anymore.

This is a good option if your inventory is large or changes frequently.

The Facebook catalog can be updated using Pixel but only if the website's metadata or structured data is set up correctly.

To add items automatically from your website to your Facebook catalog, you need to add the required microdata tags to your Facebook pixel installation (on your website). 

With this update, ReadyCMS will do this for you automatically. We wanted to save your time, and save you the trouble of dealing with all of this.

Microdata is an HTML specification used to nest metadata within existing content on web pages. Microdata uses a supporting vocabulary to describe an item and name-value pairs to assign values to its properties. You can use microdata tags on your website to provide information about your products using a standardized format.

Facebook allows several ways of setting up microdata and meta tags, and our ReadyCMS devs decided on choosing the OpenGraph protocol for the implementation and verification of microdata.

So by using ReadyCMS you are already set for automated updates on your Facebook shop. All that's left for you to do is to create Facebook Catalog if you already haven't and watch how your business is growing!