In a bit to build up and further enhance its e-commerce offerings, Facebook launched limited shopping options on Instagram and WhatsApp sometimes last year. Further building on that, the company has recently announced that it is set to launch its shops feature across Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. With the coronavirus pandemic still trying to be contained by many nations of the world, tech companies seem to be making the most of it. To expand its reach, increase its revenue and make shopping easy for its customers, Facebook shops is set to be launched soon across major social media platforms.
In launching this feature, the company looks to work closely on product integrations. It looks to ensure that products are integrated with online platforms and shops made free for businesses to access. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also stressed the place of privacy with this new feature guaranteeing the privacy of what people buy and the transactions made. This ‘shops’ feature aims at allowing businesses to sell products on the largest global social media platforms. These platforms will be fully optimized to make them more business-friendly in generating ad revenue for users.
This ‘shops’ feature will also allow businesses to set up a single online store that can be accessible across all the social media platforms where the shops feature is operational. With this, it becomes a lot easier for customers to interact with your business and purchase the products and services that you offer. Zuckerberg also mentioned in this announcement that these social media platforms will work on product integrations with Shopify and other e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Channel Advisor, Feedonomics, Cafe24 and a host of many others. Zuckerberg was joined by Tobias Lutkewho is the CEO of Shopify to announce their partnership on this feature.
After the first launch of Facebook Shops, there was a decline in the market shares of Shopify. This misfortune was overturned following Lutke’s emergence as CEO. Shopifyrebounded and joined Facebook in recording a 2% increase of shares.
This new ‘Shops’ feature just like every other e-commerce feature of Facebook will be freely accessible by businesses. The company is doing this to help small businesses boost customer engagement, conversion, and ad sales. Zuckerberg said this feature is the biggest step taken by the company to enable commerce across its family of apps. This feature is expected to come with the right tools that can help you start a business and run it from the comfort of your living room.
Mark Zuckerberg said making it easy for businesses, particularly small businesses to have online storefronts, is the primary focus of this feature launch. It is working to ensure that the company through this e-commerce feature can help businesses survive and thrive especially during these trying times.
Facebook is also working on making available a tool that connects the loyalty program and shopping feature. This tool is expected to show product tags underneath videos in a bid to increase engagements. This follows that live videos are being engaged by about 800 million people globally on Facebook and Instagram. This tool and the ‘Shops’ feature will make it easy to shop for products in real-time.
