Facebook Shops – A feature wherein, businesses, specially Small and Medium enterprises (SME’s) can sell their products online was launched in July 2020.
Since then, a lot of SME’s has benefitted from the same. People (consumers) can find Facebook shops on a a business’ Facebook Page or Instagram profile, or discover them through stories or ads. From there, you can browse the full collection, save products you’re interested in and place an order.
Pretty cool! Since then e-commerce transactions on Facebook shops has been on the rise.
There are now more than 1 million active Facebook Shops, and over 250 million people are interacting with them every month, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Reasons behind Facebook Shops success
Since the beginning of Year 2020, right when the novel coronavirus baffled Planet Earth, many small businesses have been finding it difficult to survive, leave apart grow their business!
In July 2020, with an aim to help SME’s, Facebook Shops was launched, basis which the advertisers need ot have a transactional website to seel items – they can sell that directly from Facebook or Instagram. Even though there is no fee to register for Facebook shops, however, Facebook does charge a nominal fee per transaction, which is fair, considering the expenses advertisers save on building a website and getting into the hassle of website maintenance.
In a bid to expand its e-commerce network, Shops are now extended to WhatsApp. It works just like Facebook shops.
As per Zuckerberg:
“We’re bringing Shops to WhatsApp which will make it easier for people to find the products or brands that they want to engage with.”
This has been a significant move! Since, long the Facebook owned platform – WhatsApp has been finding ways to monetise its platform. However, the could not do that as people did not want to pay for using WhatsApp, nor did they want to see ads in whatsApp stories or in their WhatsApp chats. This move will help the Facebook owned platform make money in the form of sales commission.
Just like in Facebook Shops, when someone purchases from an advertiser, the advertiser has to pay a nominal transaction charge to Facebook. In the same manner, advertisers selling on WhatsApp would do the same.
And also a key note, Zuckerberg says that businesses will only need to set up their shop once to have it work across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which could also expand eCommerce opportunities.
In addition to this, Facebook’s also bringing Shop listings to Marketplace.
Zuckerberg also says that Facebook will soon offer new, personalized Shop ads, which will display items based on people’s individual shopping preferences and past behaviors.
“We’re launching the ability for a business to send shoppers to where you’re going to be most likely to make a purchase based on your shopping behaviour.”
Yes, Facebook is adding what’s essentially Pinterest’s Lens visual search tool into Instagram.
“A lot of shopping discovery begins with visual discovery, right, so you see something that you think is awesome. And then, you know, maybe you want to see other products that are like that, or you want to figure out how to get that product. And this is the type of problem that AI can really help out with. [So] one of the things we’re going to do is when you’re on Instagram…We’re getting ready to start rolling out experience and testing an experience that we’re calling visual search.”
This will work in the same way as Google Lens, wherein a user can upload a picture of an item and find related items on Facebook Shops.
Hail Facebook!
Hail E-Commerce!
Hail WhatsApp!
Hail THE SOCIAL NETWORK 🙂
Related Reads: How to Sell Online using Digital Marketing in 2021?
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