How VKontakte goods work

Vkontakte products are a showcase of products, which displays the names, images of the product and its cost. Users can view the product catalog, and then learn more about a specific product by selecting it from the list. When you select a product, an additional window opens with extended information about the product: description, additional images, as well as a button for contacting the group administrator.

How to enable VKontakte products

To connect Vkontakte products, you need to go to a group or public page, select "community management" in the menu and find the "Products" item in the "Information" tab. At the time of writing, this item is the bottom of the list.

You need to change the mode from "disabled" to "enabled", after which additional settings will appear:

Disadvantages of VKontakte products

At the moment, among the disadvantages for group and community leaders, one can note the inability to select several administrators or group managers to answer purchase requests from users, so far only one of the group administrators can answer questions and orders.

It is not possible to place an order and pay online, you must contact the group administrator, who, in turn, may be absent and it will take time to process the order before he enters the page and reads the message.

Is it worth using Vkontakte products?

Vkontakte products are a new opportunity to attract potential customers and an additional sales market. Of course, sales on the social network were carried out before, for this purpose photo albums were created with images of goods and their cost, but now, with the advent of the storefront, sales on VK have reached a new, more convenient level.

There are a considerable number of people for whom the Internet begins with Vkontakte, and it also ends there, so the opportunity to offer your services on this social network in a convenient format will help you find new potential customers, as well as increase the loyalty of the old ones.

A positive factor is the fact that VKontakte products are a new format and a new section, which in turn will attract new curious customers who want to try the novelty.

Anyone involved in online sales of consumer products should definitely use the new section. You need to start right now offering your goods and services in a new section and create an online store based on Vkontakte. The sooner you start using it, the more knowledge base you will have time to get and the more competitive advantages you will have. Do not forget that the existing shortcomings will be eliminated over time, and the section itself will acquire new functions.

Anna Koneva

For the buyer:

• No need to go to other sites to choose a product.
• It is easy to contact the seller.
• Here you can leave a review after the purchase.

For the seller:

• Easier than making a store from scratch. It is not necessary to buy a domain and take care of hosting.
• Social proof works: likes and number of followers. If there are 2000 subscribers on the store page on the social network, this immediately inspires confidence. And some unknown site on the Internet - no.
• It is easier to attract buyers from the same social network to the page of an online store on a social network than to a third-party site.

1. In a regular online store, you can make a purchase at any time: on weekends, at night. On VKontakte, the buyer writes to the seller and waits for a response. In order not to lose a client, specify additional contacts (mail, instant messenger). Write what time you answer, and when it is better not to wait for an answer. And respond to requests as soon as possible.

1. Write in detail about delivery and payment: what payment methods, what delivery options, how much delivery costs, whether a return is possible. So you avoid unnecessary questions and save time for yourself and your customers.

1. If you are tech-savvy and the product catalog is huge, use API "VKontakte" and upload items in bulk. But if it has come to this, it may make sense to create a full-fledged online store.

Create an application

Another way to sell VKontakte is to create a store app. It looks like one site is inserted into another.

The application works as a full-fledged online store: buyers place an order and pay on their own, all sales and customer data is saved (and can be synchronized with accounting programs). Plus, an online store website is automatically created with the application, which can work on its own.

If you already have a website with an online store, create your own application (entrust this to the programmer). To help developer section And store app placement rules.

If there is no online store, use ready-made solutions:

Online store constructor. For VKontakte, Ecwid has its own application, which is configured separately for each client. As a result, you don't have to create a new app as such. To use the service:

1. Go to application page "VKontakte" and click the "Install Application" button.
2. Select (or create) the store page you want to connect the app to.
3. Enter your e-mail, password and click "Create Store".

1. Copy the link (it will be the application of your VKontakte online store) and add it to the "Links" tab on the store page.

1. Click "Add link", in the window that opens, create a short description of the type "Our store VKontakte". Done, application added.
2. Go to it from the community page.

1. Fill in the fields with a description of the store and the seller (the requirement is "VKontakte", this information will be visible at the very bottom of the application page) and save.
2. Click the Manage Store button. You will be taken to the control panel, where you need to add products and descriptions, select payment and delivery methods (use).

The finished product application looks like this:

An online store is automatically created on the Ecwid domain of the form store4324033.ecwid.com (the numbers are the store ID, you will have others). It can be used standalone and tied to your own domain.

Cost: up to 10 products free of charge for an unlimited period, then - from 790 rubles per month (when paid for the year - 659 rubles per month).

Shop Script

CMS for creating websites and online stores. To sell on VKontakte, you need to create a separate application using the Shop-Script service.

1. Register a new account and confirm the registration (an email with a link will be sent to the mail). You will have a website with a technical address like w160404-849.host.webasyst.com (you can replace the characters up to the point “w160404-849” with any name during registration). If necessary, you can bind to your own domain.
2. Go to the control panel (backend) and fill the online store with goods. Use the setup instructions and help.
   1. Register an online store account, confirm by the link in the letter. A site with the address shop.shoppyboom.ru is automatically created (instead of “shop” there will be a name that you yourself will come up with).
   2. Set up a store and fill it with products (see

Any seller wants his product to be sold. To improve sales, various methods are used, one of them is selling through social networks. And why not, especially if it's free. On VKontakte, you can create your own community or group, and use them to advertise your product, and negotiate the sale there. This article will discuss how to add products to the VK group.

Goods VKontakte: we decorate a showcase in a group.

If you want to promote your product through the social network VKontakte, then this article is for you, here we will tell you how to set up and create your own showcase with goods in VK.

We turn on the display of VK products.

And so, we already have a group in which we want to place our products. First, we need to enable them. To do this, go to the group, Press "Actions" (button in the form of ), and select "Community Management".

Next, we need to go to "Sections". Find “Products” in the list and change the value to “Included”.

Also, after you turn on the goods in VK, additional settings will appear:

Here you can set up delivery regions, product comments, store currency, contact details, and store description.

We add the product to the VK group.

After we have included the products, on the main page of the group we will have the item “Add product”.

Click "Add Product". We will be prompted to select product categories, name, description, photos and cost. Everything seems to be clear here.

After we click “Create a product”, our product will appear on the main page of the VK group, if we click on it, we will see the following:

In order to add another product, you need to go to the products page by clicking on the inscription “Products”.

Then click the "Add Product" button.

Editing goods in VK.

Everything is quite simple here. We hover over the product we are interested in, a pencil sign will appear, click on it and make the necessary changes.

We create a selection (category) of goods in VK.

You can also create separate categories for a separate group of goods. This is especially true when you have a large assortment of different products. To do this, again go to the products and select “Create a selection” from the top.

Next, enter the name of the collection and select the cover, click create.

After creating the collection, we need to put down the belonging to this collection in the necessary goods. For example, I created a selection of "Services". If we go into editing a product or create a new one, then we will have the “Collections” item, where we select the one we need.

If you check the box “This is the main collection of the community”, then the products from this collection will be displayed on the main page of the group.

Now going to the selection we will see our products.

Removing a product from the VK group

In order to delete an unnecessary product, you need to go to the product (do not edit, but simply click on the product), select the "More" item and click "Delete".

If you need to remove all products, you can simply disable them in the settings.

The archives of the site contain a lot of materials devoted to the creation of online stores, I noticed the growth of questions related to stores on Vkontakte, at first it is not very clear what is meant.

Now, we'll take a look at all the details..

In the previous post, I marked the main trend of the outgoing year = , the same strategy will be relevant for a very long time. Therefore, it is necessary to engage in attracting sales through social networks, as we know - the most popular social network in the CIS is VKontakte. There is an opinion that “Insolvent schoolchildren are sitting in VK”, but if you look at the advertising budgets of companies that go there every day, there will hardly be any doubt that Vkontakte is an excellent sales generator.

Moreover, you can see more and more examples of independent stores on VK, not just as an addition to the main site of the store, but as independent trading platforms, apparently this approach is already beginning to justify itself. Moreover, the social network recently launched a tool " Products VKontakte". It includes tools for deploying full-fledged community-based stores. But first things first.

How can an online store on VKontakte look like?

Today, there are two formats for organizing a platform for sales on VKontakte, whether it is a moot point to consider them as a full-fledged online store, nevertheless, everyone who wants to “sell through contact” has more than enough opportunities.

The first option is to make an online store in the application format, recently the administration of Vkontakte officially allowed sell real goods through applications, and even in any convenient way, just remember to read the list of rules.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of VK applications are games and other entertainment things, the idea of ​​organizing a store in this form makes sense, and can be implemented in the following ways:

1.Iframe

The easiest way is that when opening your application, the user sees the site of your online store in it without any differences, just in a lower resolution, and the application itself is a regular browser.

On the one hand, there are advantages:

• No need to make a separate version of the store for VK
• The user does not leave their familiar environment
• All the functionality of the main online store remains
• Fast and inexpensive implementation

On the other hand, there are obvious disadvantages:

• Complete dependence on the main site
• Incorrect display at low resolution
• Possible errors and incompatibilities

It is worth trying to launch an Iframe application, the risks and investments will be minimal, the main thing is to provide for the correct display of the online store, even better, add adaptation elements, for example, automatic authorization through Vkontakte so that the user entering the site from the application does not re-enter his personal data when making purchases.

2. Self application

With a more serious approach to creating a Vkontakte online store, it’s better to immediately think about an independent application focused specifically on a social network.

If you follow this path, then again you can face a choice - order writing code from scratch or use ready-made services. It rarely makes sense to make an application store from scratch, as a rule, the functionality of special services offering the creation of such applications in a semi-automatic mode is enough to satisfy all needs.

A selection of services:

This platform offers to make an online store in its constructor and as a result get the main site, its mobile version, + application for social networks (VKontakte, Facebook), a product showcase code will also be available that can be embedded into any site. The service provides services under several tariff plans: Free and three paid, costing from 790 to 4500 rubles. monthly. Examples of stores made using the service:

However, it is easy to get confused in all the functionality of the service + not all instructions are translated into Russian, so using Ecwid solely to support the Vkontakte online store will probably not be very profitable. In any case, this platform is worth keeping in mind, it allows you to integrate with a huge number of popular engines, social networks and payment systems.

The module is only for Bitrix, which means it is not suitable for owners of online stores on other CMS. The owners of Bitrix are really lucky, this add-on allows you to integrate the entire store along with the product catalog into Facebook or a contact. There is a ready-made template for an online store for applications, it looks like this:

It can be adapted to your store, the main thing is that glitches and errors are excluded, everything is already debugged and customized for you. Such a pleasure costs almost 9 thousand, a license is forever without monthly payments. A free 7-day trial is also available.

A popular online store builder offers its own version of deploying a commercial resource based on floating frames (iframes).

The effect of inconspicuous "implantation" of the main site in Vkontakte is achieved through the use of a design theme, the style of which is combined with the design of standard pages of the social network.

An iframe application allows you to display a showcase with goods and all the functionality for placing an order (cart, order form) on a user page in a social network. At the same time, in the form, some of the fields are filled in with data from the Vkontakte user profile (first name, last name).

To gain access to the application, you need to register in the constructor and deploy an online store on its platform. The frame, as well as the main commercial resource, is managed through the administrative panel of the designer. There you can also configure the theme and connect to the social network API.

In addition, Shop-Script provides platform customers with a similar solution (based on iframe) for displaying a storefront on a Facebook page. Due to this, this option is suitable for creating an online store from scratch. But for an already existing commercial resource, this solution is unprofitable: moving a store from another site “to the rails” of Shop-Script will be expensive. The cost of the "set" - from 399 rubles. per month.

Unfortunately, this direction is just beginning to develop and, as you can see, there are few ready-made products, but do not despair, making an online store in the application format is not the only thing that Vkontakte allows us to do, there are no less interesting options.

It is important not to scare the user - do not require access to those rights that are necessary to install the application. Enough access to personal data, and even the permission to publish entries or send mailings to friends can alert anyone. Also, be aware that you can notify your app users about promotions or discounts from time to time, but don't abuse it.

Online store in Vkontakte in the form of a showcase.

Rejoice, fellow administrators! You no longer have to “bend over” and use an ordinary photo album as a showcase - a special trading functionality has been implemented for this.

It also allows you to add a short description of the product, upload up to four additional photos, specify the delivery region and currency. Users can view the image of the product in normal and enlarged size, and to purchase it, contact the seller through the built-in contact form.

How to connect a product showcase to a group:

1. On the user page of Vkontakte, on the left in the menu, select "My groups". Then on the right click on "Create Community". In the window that appears, enter the name of the group or public. And again on "Create a community." This step is needed if you don't have a group.

2. If the group already exists, then you need to go to its settings: "My groups", "Management". Then click on the name of the community and on the right "Community Management".

3. On the options page at the bottom in the "Products" section, select the "Included" value.
And go to "Show settings".

4. Here you can set the regions for delivery, the seller's contact, set the main currency for payments, enable (disable) comments on products and edit the description of the store. After making changes, click "Save".

The Products section will appear on your community page. To form the assortment of the store, click on the bag icon.

4. After that, the card "Adding a product" will open. Here the description of the product, its category is set, the main photo and additional ones are loaded. The cost is also indicated in the currency selected in the settings.

After making changes to the card and clicking on the “Create” button below, the product appears on the community page in the section of the same name. To view, the user clicks on its name, and a new pop-up window opens in front of it with product photos, description and cost. To contact you about the purchase, the buyer goes through the link "Contact the seller".

As you can see, the built-in trading functionality does not shine with its capabilities. Although they are quite enough for the sale of small consignments of goods

Group design

Suppose you already have a showcase of goods, but do not forget about other things - such as the design of the group, you need it to be organized correctly and not make it difficult for users to navigate.

Firstly, for the primary capture of the user's attention, you need to make a competent header for the group and an avatar in your corporate style, so that on your first visit it is immediately clear where you are and what might be interesting. It’s best if you immediately introduce yourself as an online store in the title, as well as indicate your brand and priority product categories, but try to avoid overly long titles.

The avatar of the online store group gives a chance to really capture the user's attention, do not skimp on high-quality design, you should show uniqueness, stand out from hundreds of other stores. Another good trick is to indicate phone numbers and contacts directly on the profile picture.

Secondly, it is worth creating in the “discussions” several topics in which there will be information on frequently asked questions and payment for goods. Below is an example of how this is done at a clothing store.

Knowing the wiki markup will help a lot, if you want to anchor a full , visual navigation with quick links is a great advantage, look at the example below:

Use the group wall to announce promotions, it will also be effective to make regular selections of goods, for example, a clothing store can publish country combinations of things in color, style, shape ...

Be sure to hire a manager, just like in a regular online store, you need a person who will advise customers and deal with support issues. For many users, it is more convenient to write in a chat than to call.

Vkontakte store promotion

Regardless of whether you decide to make the Vkontakte online store in the form of an application or a group, this is only the first stage of work and without promotion, you should not expect orders to fall straight from heaven. The subsequent success of your store is directly related to how effectively you will promote it. You can refer to the traditional types of advertising officially offered by the Vkontakte administration.

This is a relatively new advertising format, or rather, it has been around for a long time, but has recently acquired an official status. As you know, there are a large number of large communities on Vkontakte in a variety of categories, from entertaining and humorous to the most specific and narrow topics. Advertising posts (records) i.e. posting on the wall of these groups or pages can bring an avalanche of transitions to your store. You need to be guided by the same principles that were voiced above, advertise only in those communities where your target audience can live.

• Post promotion.

Relatively new targeting format. Based on the promotion of services and goods using entries in the user's news feed. Sponsored posts differ from regular ones only by the label "Advertising post". They allow you to tell potential customers about your online store in an easy and unobtrusive way.

• Special offers in games.

They play on Vkontakte, and how! The social sphere is full of various toys for the “immature”. The trick is to offer users a certain reward in the game (the number of points, some kind of super-powerful weapon, super-power for the hero) for completing a certain task. This can be registration in a group, placing an order, etc. Most likely, you will have to spend money on the "game" reward, but it's worth it. The main thing is to get interested.