Meta is no longer just a social platform; it's the hottest distribution channel on the block. With over 250 million monthly shoppers in 2024 alone, it comes as no surprise that Shops (and social commerce as a whole) have captivated interest from SMBs and enterprise brands alike.

But while launching your own Shop is a relatively simple process, optimizing it to ensure a seamless shopping experience can be a tricky endeavor. In this guide, we'll walk you through 5 crucial steps every brand should take to get the most from their Shop.

Why optimizing your Meta Shop is essential

Your Shop is evolving to become a powerful destination in itself. Meta is increasingly directing ad traffic to native checkout instead of external storefronts. With the buyer's journey beginning and ending on-platform, delivering a seamless shopping experience is more crucial than ever.

An optimized Meta Shop can also deliver significant bottom-line benefits. When customers are treated to the same shopping experience they've become accustomed to on your main site, their likelihood of converting (with higher AOV) increases materially.

Plus, your Shop is a valuable source of signal that will give the ad platform more visibility and data points to optimize off of. With more shoppers visiting and converting on your Shop, you’ll improve the data feedback loop and drive stronger ad performance in return.

Consistency is key to winning this game—your Shop experience should be as seamless and cohesive as your Shopify storefront. Here are our recommended steps on how to do just that:

Our 5 recommended tips for optimizing your Meta Shop

1. Sync with Shopify

The most important thing you can do for your Shop during peak sales periods (e.g., Black Friday, Mother’s Day, etc)? Effectively communicate your offer and put relevant products/categories front and center.

Make sure your sale or offer is active and being shown on Shops the same way it’s displayed on your website.

If you integrate your Shop with Shopify, much of this consistency will be automated for you. However, you may need to be more proactive with any relevant offers you’re running. Meta automatically pulls these from multiple sources, including previous ads, so it is often more accurate for you to control them manually.

The process is simple:

• Add your offer(s) to Shopify and enable it for the Facebook and Instagram sales channels.
• Then, in Meta, navigate to Commerce Manager > Promotions > Offers and verify it’s active or scheduled.
• Optionally, you can apply your discount code at the ad level and let Meta automatically apply the discount at checkout for viewers using the in-app browser.

Two examples of brands delivering seamless cross-channel experiences are DTC cookware pioneer HexClad and the DTC wallets (and more) juggernaut Ridge. To ensure social shoppers don’t miss their most relevant offers, they highlight offers at the top of their Shop. Simple, clear, and consistent. If a shopper visits their Shop and then finds their way to the site, there’s a cohesive experience and consistent offer.

2. Merchandise your homepage

Some of today's social shoppers have the attention span of a goldfish (less than 3 seconds). This means putting your core products front and center is absolutely essential to create a one-stop shop for Meta users.

Here's a common setup we recommend:

1. Carousel cards featuring your top collections
2. 2-3 static product blocks highlighting key SKUs and bundles

These setups are easy to iterate on, so experiment with different layouts to see what resonates most with your audience.

Tip: ​​If you have a larger catalog, highlight a “shop by price” collection block (e.g., <$100, <$200, <$300).

Leading activewear label Alo Yoga does a great job merchandising its homepage by balancing industry best practices with tidbits that feel unique to its mindfulness-oriented brand. Its homepage starts with sections like “Best Sellers” and “Collaborations,” followed by themed collections such as “Movement” and “Lounge.”

In the weeks leading up to a sale event, test a few different iterations and monitor the impact on CVR from ads and organic.

As the year progresses, you’ll also want to maintain relevance by highlighting seasonally relevant products in your featured merchandise. A thoughtfully curated, timely homepage is the first step to catching the eye of today’s easily distracted scrollers.

3. Add an email opt-in offer

One of the trickiest parts of social commerce is that you’re essentially maintaining your borrowed audience instead of converting them to an owned channel. However, you can mitigate this by adding an email opt-in offer that mirrors your website's email capture form. This turns your Meta traffic into an owned audience that you can nurture off-platform.

How to set this up on Meta:

• Go to Commerce Manager > Promotions > Marketing Settings > Marketing.
• Enable “collect emails at checkout” and “collect emails with a discount.”
• Make sure your CRM is connected so leads funnel seamlessly into your ESP by heading to Commerce Manager > Promotions > Marketing Settings > Marketing > Connect your CRM.

Over time, this means you're not just capturing leads—you're building a direct path to future sales and strong customer relationships.

4. Remove unwanted UGC from Shops

Take control over what community content gets featured on your Shop by toggling off the “Auto-added UGC” feature. Otherwise, there may be some unwanted UGC photo-bombing your Shop’s homepage and PDPs. To do this, go to Commerce Manager > UGC.

5. Prevent Meta from creating unwanted discounts on your Shop

Make sure that Meta is not pulling in any unwanted discounts from your Shopify account. In theory, you shouldn’t have any discounts enabled for the FB/IG sales channels that are not supposed to be running, but sometimes things fall through the cracks. To ensure Meta doesn’t promote an unwanted discount, be sure to toggle off the following settings within your Commerce Manager (Commerce Manager > Overview > Shops (Manage) > Offers).

How Proxima directly contributes to your Shop’s success

While optimizing your Shop is a key revenue driver for your brand, you need to drive traffic there to see results. That's where Proxima comes into play.

Our data intelligence platform curates data-enriched audiences to improve your ad targeting and bring high-intent customers to your doorstep.

Don’t just take our word for it. Take a look at health and wellness powerhouse C4 Energy. The leading global pre-workout label used AI Audiences to drive a 20% increase in ROAS while scaling up ad spend by 50%.

Ready to drive high-intent traffic to your Shop?

See why rapidly growing eCommerce brands are using Proxima’s new ConversionIQ to scale profitably and improve your Shop’s conversion rates.

With our advanced Conversion API technology, you can send predictive, enriched first-party data to Meta to improve campaign performance.

🎁 Special Offer: Test ConversionIQ for 14 days against your top Meta campaign. If Proxima loses, we'll fully cover the cost of revenue you miss out on.

>> Learn more <<