Three easy technological tools to help start your E-commerce business
Jessica Hussey — medium.com/@jessica.a.hussey
Vanja Vujuovic — medium.com/@vanjavanjavanja24
Summary of Post
This post summarizes how our team combined easily available technological tools in order to create a web service that promotes global e-commerce. Throughout this post, readers will learn about the usefulness of this tool, what specific tools were used and finally how to step-by-step create this program.
Why use this tool?
Over the past 20 years, the role of social media in our society has grown exponentially, greatly impacting the way we live our daily lives. Anywhere, at any time of day, you have the ability to log on and connect with those around us both near and far. At surface level, social media allows for users to connect with old and new friends, sharing day to day experiences like family photos on Facebook or random thoughts on Twitter. However, beyond that, social media has impacted the way politics, business, and news, to name a few, are circulated. Since millions of people are engaged and connected to these sites, the potential of reaching a large audience with your message is high. For example, after the Humboldt Broncos tragic bus crash on April 6th, 2018 occurred, the world of social media banned together, spreading the word of the incident which led to millions of dollars being raised to support those who have passed along with a Jersey day on April 12th to show signs of support. Millions of hashtags and condolence post were made out to those who were affected by the incident since then which showcases the power that social media has today.
However, currently, in some countries around the world, there is a ban on the majority of social media, limiting the abilities of those who live there. This has greatly impacted local, small businesses as they have minimum resources to expand their business globally, suffering from language restraints, technological barriers, and consumer limitations. Therefore, the purpose of this tool is to demonstrate how to create a third party that takes the Instagram account of business’ in those restricted countries who would like to expand and sell their products for them globally. Not only is it useful for the business owners in these foreign countries, but it promotes diversity in the market place.
The three technological tools used are:
Zapier: An online technological tool that connect apps you use every day to automate tasks. By using triggers or actions, data is sent to other internet application including but not limited to MailChimp, Google Services and Instagram to name a few.
Instagram: A social media technological tool that enables photo and video sharing.
Shopify: An online technological tool that allows for you to start your online business
Getting started
Step 1: Find your Instagram business that you would like to connect with.
Step 2: Create a Zapier account by clicking on the “Sign up” tab
- Upload personal information as requested
Step 3: Create a Shopify account by clicking on the “Get Started” tab
- Upload personal information as requested
Once you have activated your accounts and choosen the Instagram account you would like to team with you can start the process on Zapier.
Tool building process:
Step 1: Log onto your Zapier account and start your TRIGGER by selecting the CHOOSE APP and selecting INSTAGRAM
Step 2: Select choose trigger and enable NEW MEDIA POSTED option which will allow new posts on the selected Instagram account to connect to Shopify later on
Step 3: Finalize this step by clicking on TEST THIS STEP to ensure that the connection is successfully set up
Step 4: In order to translate the text that are on the Instagram captions on the items being sold, select TRANSLATE on zapier.
- Step 4.1: This will prompt you to choose which language you would like Zapier to translate the text in — Fill accordingly
- Step 4.2 : Select the text from an Instagram caption and place it in the textbook
- Step 4.3: Select the translation language that you would like to be on Shopify in order for consumers to be able to search easily — Fill accordingly
Step 5 : Often as these Instagram business’ will be located in other, foreign parts of the world a translation is required in order to understand keywords and hashtags that will become the search term or product description in the end. In order to start this process the user must SELECT FORMATTER — an app by Zapier and select TEXT
Step 6: The user is going to SPLIT TEXT which completes the translation function from the initial language to the one selected
Step 7: To complete the translation process, the user must select SEPARATOR while will permit the user to select the information from the # tag in the caption
Step 8: The user is going to finish off the process by clicking COMPLETE PRODUCT on the shopify option which will upload the Instagram post the shopify in order to be sold
Step 8: Create a Shopify template that fits your needs. So long as product information is included in the photo caption with special symbols preceding relevant information like price and inventory the template can be fully auto populated using Formatter by Zapier.
Depending on how well you fill in the template you may not want post directly to directly to your Shopify store. The app default is to “yes”, if you want to change this simply select “no”.
And that’s it! Now when the client post a picture of an product to Instragram it is instantly connected to Shopify so that customers from all over have the opportunity to see and purchase their products.
Wrapping Up…
Throughout this post, we have taught you how to connect an Instagram account to Shopify in order to start selling products online. All it takes is three straight forward accounts: Zapier, Instagram and Shopify in order to set up with service.
It is important to note that this simple and effective system can be used for setting up any sort of e-commerce store for other business’ not just those with access issues.
Thanks for listening!
Jessica & Vanja
