Many times I get asked if I can create Facebook Tabs, the answer is yes, however, I’m often hesitant to create something so simple, that will require my future involvement to make a slight change. I’m not in the business of charging clients for minor changes, I’d rather create a product that gives the client full control enabling them to do things like update and promote seasonal offers.
There are companies out there charging ridiculous amounts of money to create a Facebook Page with Custom Tabs. Here’s my solution:
What you see here is a Facebook Tab, which is entirely administered via WordPress. This is a checkout screen to a simple PayPal plugin, which I have reskinned to look cleaner and convert better.
The Checkout skin scales nicely across different devices. Here you can see it within a Facebook tab at 520px, it will also work on mobile devices and in 960 wide web browsers.
Being able to promote and sell your products right within Facebook is a huge plus, because the people who want to buy your products are already there hanging out. Having a captive audience on your Facebook page will allow you to reach out to your customers in realtime.
Having a Facebook Tab full of products will enable your business to market offers exclusively to your Facebook fans. Being able to quickly adapt to seasonal changes in your sector and growing trends puts you at a competitive advantage. This is why I feel having full control over your Facebook Tabs, will maximise your chance of a sale.
Creating a Facebook Tab in your 1 JUMP 2 developed WordPress template is really simple!
Create a Page, as your normally do, then select “Facebook Tab” from the drop down menu which can be found in the Page Attributes menu. This will apply our Facebook Tab template, which strips out your current theme and makes it wide enough to display on Facebook.
Next is an optional step, which creates a Like Gate. If you’re not aware what like gating is, it’s basically a different view of your page, that will only be shown to people who haven’t already liked your page.
We use the Featured Image option to display an image when somebody hasn’t liked your page. So go wild and photoshop something. Here are some examples.
Below is a crude example of a Facebook Tab, containing one line of text and an Add to Cart button. The photos below show the page being created in WordPress and show it live on Facebook.
What you put on your Facebook Tab is only limited by your imagination. You might want to display video, photos, or offers. You could sell Gift Vouchers in time for Christmas with our F-Commerce plugin.
So to summarise the aim was to create something, which is simple to use and administer, which isn’t completely new to an existing way of working.
Most of our clients already use WordPress, so will find creating Facebook Tabs a breeze!
I will be offering this as a package to new clients, as well as existing ones who wish to add this functionality to their account.
I can also offer a hosted solution for agencies wishing to administer Facebook Tabs for their own clients.
1 JUMP 2 can be contacted by a number of different channels all listed on our contact page.
