PREREQUISITES:
Make sure the Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads add-on is installed and enabled.
If you do not have a Facebook account yet, you can create it at https://www.facebook.com/business.
The Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads add-on allows you to upload your product catalog to Facebook and then use this catalog to promote goods via ads on Facebook and Instagram. So, as a result, you will have products from your X-Cart store imported into your Facebook Catalog. The add-on does NOT facilitate the creation of a Facebook Page Shop.
Catalog uploading is done with the help of a product feed generation in X-Cart.
Product Feed Generation
Once the Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads add-on is installed and configured, you can proceed to the product feed generation.
The add-on activates a new setting, "Add to Facebook product feed," for each product in your store's catalog. You will find it in the Marketing section of the product details page.
This setting comes enabled by default, meaning that all products with the option "Add to Facebook product feed" add to the product feed and automatically upload to your Facebook Catalog. If you want to exclude any product from the catalog, make sure you disable the "Add to Facebook product feed" setting for this product beforehand.
To generate a feed:
On the Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads settings page in your store's Admin area (Marketing -> Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads), click the "Generate Product Feed" button to get a link for uploading a product feed to your Facebook Catalog.
In X-Cart 5.3.x and earlier, the section name is Sales Channels.
The system will take some time to generate a Product Feed URL depending on the overall store inventory.
You can use the Google Product Feed add-on to expand the data values submitted to the feed. The Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads add-on feed will also include the hidden/global/class attribute values set for the Google Product feed.
Once the process is completed, copy the generated Product Feed URL and paste it into a relevant field in your Facebook Business account when specifying a product source for your catalog.
The "Frequency of Product Feed renewal" setting itself will not automatically make renewals. You will need to configure your server to run scheduled X-Cart tasks to facilitate automatic renewals.
Product Feed Upload to Facebook
To upload your product feed to Facebook:
Navigate to the Catalog Manager of your Facebook Business account at https://www.facebook.com/products/ and click to create a new catalog or choose to edit an existing one there.
At the "Add Products to Your Catalog" step, specify that you want to "Use Data Feeds."
In the "How do you want to upload your data feed?" section, choose "Set a schedule" and paste the Product Feed URL generated for you by X-Cart in the "Data Feed URL" field:
Remember that scheduled feed updates will be possible only if your server is configured to run scheduled X-Cart tasks.Schedule automatic uploads and name the feed the way you like it better.
Click the "Start Upload" button to import your products from X-Cart to Facebook.
After the products upload, you will see them on the Products tab in your Facebook Catalog Manager.
That's it! After uploading the products, you can start promoting your goods via ads on Facebook.
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