Facebook Announces Launch of Facebook Shop

Facebook now has over 2.6 billion monthly active users and a cumulative total of 2.90 billion users accessing the company’s core products every month. These include Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. 

Facebook ad revenues stood close to US$69bn in 2019, with a growing share of marketers’ digital advertising budgets being dedicated to both Facebook and Instagram. Whatever a businesses goals might be - from brand exposure and lead generation to revenue growth - Facebook will likely make up an increasingly sizable part of many online retailers’ marketing strategies in 2020 and beyond.

Facebook last week officially launched Facebook Page Shops through Facebook Business Pages. The idea here is to help small businesses list and promote their products and services directly on Facebook and Instagram. The launch has been accelerated because of the current global pandemic and will be welcomed by those financially hit. 

Mark Zuckerberg and the engineering team at Facebook will be looking to release Facebook Shop across Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. By doing this, merchants will have access to Facebook’s 2.6 billion monthly active users.

This is exciting news and brings a host of benefits for online merchants, one being easier communication. These two platforms are already among the world’s highest used applications because of their secure encryption and free messaging service.

Facebook Shop is fully native, which means there is no code baggage and additional excess code for the application to be running. 

The Facebook Shop team are working with key ecommerce providers such as BigCommerce, Shopify, Woocommerce, Channel advisor, CedCommerce, Cafe24, Tienda Nube and Freedonomics for seamless transparent integration that will help to improve customer journeys from start to check out.

Following Facebook’s announcement, BigCommerce also released a statement late last week detailing the partnership they have with Facebook, and launched Facebook Shop within the Commerce Manager in the administration section. Those on BigCommerce and Facebook Business Page will have immediate access to this new feature and can start increasing their coverage straight away.

Targeting this with Facebook campaign management will enable merchants to deliver a  seamless experience to shoppers.

If the news above was not exciting enough, artificial intelligence and augmented reality is being considered as part of the future Facebook Shop. If this comes to fruition, this will make the platform an incredibly rich, engaging tool to capture your customers’ interest and help guide and support them through exciting interactivity, staying fully connected throughout the user journey. Each and every customer will have their own personalised store and be intelligently guided through to checkout, ensuring the right products and appropriate price points are displayed.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses and consumers have relied on ecommerce in all shapes and forms. The rise of Facebook, Instagram and other high profile social media channels is becoming the go-to way to discover your audiences and unlock new incremental opportunities, regardless of whether your business is B2B or B2C. Facebook and Instagram have proven their worth on this agenda, and now with the help of Facebook Shops, businesses of all sizes can capitalise on this cost-effective new technology.

Combining all of the amazing features of Facebook Shop across Facebook’s ecosystem, this really is a significant game changer in the social commerce space, and we expect rapid adoption over the coming weeks and months.