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Setting up a TikTok Shop channel

TikTok has a marketplace for external sellers called TikTok Shop. With TikTok Shop, users can purchase items and engage with promotions/sponsored content directly in the TikTok app.

TikTok Shop is currently available in the following countries:

  • United States of America
  • United Kingdom
  • Germany
  • France
  • Spain
  • Italy
  • Ireland

Before you start

You need a TikTok Seller account to sell on TikTok shop.

The requirements to create a TikTok seller account vary by region. You’ll need to provide the following information based on the country you want to sell in:

United States of America

United states of America

  • Business Type
  • Company Name
  • Employer Identification Number (EIN)
  • Registered business address
  • Business address (if different from registered business address)
  • Beneficial owners of the company being registered may need to provide:
    • Legal name
    • Date of birth
    • Residential address
    • Percentage of ownership
  • The Last 4 digits of SSN or ITIN
  • A return address within the United States for buyers to return products to

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

  • Business owner's identification documents (passport/driver's license)
  • Company certificate documents
  • Company address
  • A return address within the United Kingdom for buyers to return products to

Spain

Spain

  • Business owner's identification documents (passport/driver's license)
  • Company certificate documents
  • Company address
  • Company VAT Number and document
  • A return address within Spain for buyers to return products to

Germany

Germany

  • Business owner's identification documents (passport/driver's license)
  • Company certificate documents
  • Company address
  • Company VAT Number and document
  • A return address within Germany for buyers to return products to

France

France

  • Business owner's identification documents (passport/driver's license)
  • Company certificate documents
  • Company address
  • Company VAT Number and document
  • A return address within France for buyers to return products to

Italy

Italy

  • Business owner's identification documents (passport/driver's license)
  • Company certificate documents
  • Company address
  • Company VAT Number and document
  • A return address within Italy for buyers to return products to

Ireland

Ireland

  • Business owner's identification documents (passport/driver's license)
  • Company certificate documents
  • Company address
  • A copy of the first full page of your business bank account statement
  • A return address within Ireland for buyers to return products to

 

Step 1: Connect TikTok to Channable

  1. Log in to your TikTok Seller account.
  2. In the TikTok Shop app store, scroll to the Multi-Channel Apps section, click View more, and select Channable.
  3. Click Install and follow the steps provided.

 

Step 2: Connect to TikTok Shop

  1. In Channable, go to Projects > [Your project] > Channels and click + Create Channel.
  2. In the searchbar, search for TikTok Shop.
    1. To sell on TikTok Shop in the US, select TikTok Shop US.
    2. To sell on TikTok Shop in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland and Spain, select TikTok Shop Europe.
  3. Click Add a new connection. 
  4. Select your TikTok connection and click Connect with TikTok Shop. We redirect you to your TikTok Seller account to log in and finalize the connection.

 

Step 3: Create your channel

  1. Select your new TikTok connection.
    • For ‘Name’, choose a name for your channel. This is just used to identify your channel amongst your other channels.
    • For ‘Unique ID per item’, select a field to pull your product's ID data. (This is often ‘id’).

Click Continue.

 

Step 4: Create your product listings in Channable

Note: We're gradually rolling out Marketplaces V2. If you're still using Marketplaces V1 your steps might look a little different.

Follow these steps to set up your channel:

1. Categorize your products

To set up your product data, assign categories to your products.

  • Smart Categorization: Automatically assigns product categories through our algorithm.
  • Manual Categorization: Manually assign product categories with custom rules. You can create detailed filters to map each product to the correct category.
  • Uncategorized Items: Products that still need to be reviewed and categorized

Learn more about categorizing for marketplaces

2. Set up rules

Rules help you quickly optimize your product data for the marketplace you want to sell on.

  • Rule templates: Commonly used rules you can adjust for your use case.
  • Rules setup: Set up rules to refine your product data. This can include filtering, modifying, or enhancing data fields to meet marketplace requirements.

Read more about using rules for marketplaces

3. Build your listings

The Build step is where you configure your product listings to match marketplace requirements. It’s an essential step for getting your products live and avoiding errors.

Good to know

Mandatory and optional fields: 

  • Mandatory fields [blue circle]: Required to list your products on this marketplace
  • Recommended [orange circle]: Recommended to avoid errors
  • Optional [white outline]: Not required to list

Shared attributes

Shared attributes are the common fields that apply across your products, such as EAN, prices, and titles. This step ensures uniformity in basic product information across your listings.

  • Use static or dynamic Values:
    • Static values: Fixed values that don’t change (e.g. brand name, manufacturer)
    • Dynamic values: Fields that automatically change based on the linked data (e.g. stock, prices)

Category-specific attributes

Category-specific attributes fields that specifically apply to the category for your products .This step helps in fine-tune your listings to meet category requirements for your marketplace.

Fill in attributes that are specific to the selected category (e.g. such size for clothing or dimensions for furniture.) 

 

Tip: Click Auto-map fields to automatically map categories with information previously provided in the same channel. Learn more.

Learn more about the Build step for marketplaces

 

4. Check the quality of your set up

The Quality step provides feedback on your channel before you activate it. It highlights mandatory and optional errors to ensure your product data meets requirements to list on the marketplace.

  1. Solve errors, prioritizing mandatory errors first.

Actions

  • View items: See products with specific issues.
  • View in build: Redirects to the Build step to map missing information.
  • Set categories: Directs to the Categories step to categorize items.
  • Show source: Available for ID fields. Directs to the Settings step.

Learn more about the Quality step for marketplaces

5. Preview before activating

The Preview step displays the attributes you mapped in the Build step, helping you check if everything is configured correctly by providing an overview of your products and potential errors.

Filtering:

  • Filter by error: Click the All dropdown and select if you would like to filter to display only products with errors, or products with a specific error.
  • Filter by category: Click the All categories dropdown and select the category you want to filter by.

Before you continue:

  • Review Shared attributes: Ensure all mandatory shared attributes are filled.
  • Review Category-specific attributes: Ensure all mandatory category-specific attributes are filled.
  • Check for errors: Correct any red-marked fields.

Learn more about the Preview step for marketplaces


 

 

Additional requirements for TikTok Shops

The build step in the TikTok API does contain some notable fields that are specified in this article.

  • Syncing with active products already on TikTok
    Products that are not managed by Channable (that is, products that are already in a TikTok shop before you start using Channable) will not be updated or deleted by Channable. It is advised that these products are recreated in the API if you wish for them to be maintained by Channable.
  • Rate limits
    TikTok maintains rate limits for our app, as well as a rate limit for each unique seller account.
    For the app-based rate limit, this means that it can only perform a specific amount of requests for all clients. We expect this to play a part in cases where you start creating new products, as this takes more requests than updating already existing products.
    For the user-specific rate limits, you will first have a limit (imposed by TikTok) of uploading 100 products per day. Once your probation period ends, you can upload up to 1000. See this article for more details.

Step 5: Creating products and variants

When listing products on TikTok Shop via Channable, it’s crucial to differentiate between a product and its variants. A product refers to the main item being sold, while variants are the different versions of this product, such as sizes or colors.

For instance, a shirt available in multiple sizes is a single product with each size representing a variant. On TikTok, these variants are termed "SKUs."

During the upload process, Channable automatically groups these variants into a single product listing by assigning a common item group ID to all variants of a product. This identifier helps TikTok recognize and display all related variants under one product on the platform.

Product- and variant-attributes

Products in our catalog are described using two levels of data: Product-Level Attributes and Variant-Level Attributes. Understanding the distinction and purpose of each level ensures accurate data handling and product management.

  • Product-Level Attributes
    Product-level attributes are common across all variants of a product. These attributes describe aspects that do not change regardless of the product variant. They include:
    • Title: The name of the product.
    • Description: Detailed information about the product.
    • Category: The classification or segment the product belongs to within the store.
    • Images: Visual representations of the product.
    • Package Weight: The weight of the complete package.
    • Package Dimensions: The size specifications of the product's packaging.
    • Size Chart: Provided if applicable, specific to the category to help determine sizing.
    • Any Category-Dependent Attributes: Attributes specific to the product category that are consistent across all variants.
  • Variant-Level Attributes
    Variant-level attributes differ between different versions of the same product and are labeled in the category section of Build step as "Variant". These attributes cater to the specific variations that a product can have, For example color or size such as:
    • Color: The color of the product variant.
    • Size: The size of the product variant, applicable in cases such as apparel or accessories.

Deactivating & reactivating products and variants

Removing items from the feed can result in different behaviors within the context of products and variants. Below we explain a couple of cases:

  • Deactivating/Reactivating a product
    If all variants which compose a product are removed from the feed, this will also deactivate the product. In this case, the product will be set to the “Seller Deactivated” status. The product will still be visible in the TikTok seller center but the variants will no longer be possible for customers of the shop to view or buy.
    Reactivating one variant in the product will also reactivate the product itself.
  • Deactivating variants in a product
    If one or more variants of a product are removed while some remain in the feed, the product on the TikTok shop will be edited such that the removed variants are no longer present. You can send the same variant info to TikTok again to reactivate the variant.

GPSR and DSA requirements

The European Union (EU) has introduced new GPSR and DSA requirements for online platforms, including marketplaces.

For your TikTok Shops API in Channable, fill in the IDs from TikTok Seller Central to match the products in the Shared attributes tab of the Build step:

TiKTok GPSR.png

Relevant for TikTok Shops ES only:

  1. Create at least one “Responsible person” profile and one “Manufacturer” profile in your TikTok Shop seller account. You can find this by going to My account > Account settings > Qualification Center > Responsible Person/Manufacturer.
  2. Copy the ID of each individual Responsible Person or Manufacturer profile that you have created.
  3. In the Build step in Channable, copy-paste the correct ID to each product. You can do this by using a project field, or by using a static value. If you have different manufacturers for different products, use rules to assign a different ID to each product. 
  4. If you sell in a category where extra compliance resources are required, fill in the attribute ‘Confirm Any Regulatory Marking Or Label’ with “Yes”. 
  5. For all these items where a “Yes” is submitted in the previous step, submit a publicly accessible URL and a certification name in the table “Product Certifications”. This can be found in the Build step in the TikTok Shops API.

Product certifications

For selling in EU countries, some product groups must contain product certification information. In the Build step, in the Shared attributes tab, add this information at 'Product certifications': 

Step 6: Send your products to TikTok

Almost there, your product listings are ready to be sent. If you have not activated your project go to Settings > Project settings on the left-hand side of the screen and click 'activate project'. After, go back to the APIs overview and go to "Your TikTok API Name" > Settings where you activate the API by selecting "Activate API". After you have completed this step navigate back to the APIs overview and select the blue "Run now" button to send your product listings to TikTok.

Note: The first run of the API can take rather long which is mostly due to the uploading process of all newly added images for each product variant. If you want to see fast results, we advise keeping the first runs limited to a couple of hundred items at most.

 

Step 7: Check your listings for errors

Due to a technical deficiency on TikTok’s side, we cannot reliably display the errors within Channable. This is being worked on by TikTok, but for now, it is more reliable to see the results of your export in your TikTok Seller account.