New Facebook launch: Facebook Shops

With many businesses moving online as a result of Covid-19, the recent launch of Facebook Shops could not have come at a better time. Let me walk you through the product and explain how it can be useful, especially for small businesses. 

First of all, Facebook Shops is free service for businesses and is primarily built for mobile experiences (the vast majority of time spent on Facebook is on mobile devices). With this launch, you can create and online shop across Facebook and Instagram, and offer customer support through Instagram Direct, Messenger or WhatsApp.

More features, such as a loyalty program functionality, the new Instagram shop tab, live shopping etc. are coming later this year. 

There are many benefits of Facebook Shops, especially for businesses who might have a slow or non-mobile optimised website, as this gives you access to a native and fast experience within the Facebook family of apps. This could potentially lead to less abandoned carts and in turn higher conversion rates. When users store their credit card information and the checkout functionality gets rolled out globally, these benefits will be even more noticeable. 

One of the most common complaints that I heard from clients when working at Facebook, especially within the fashion industry, was related to the lack of customisation within Facebook business solutions - and it seems like Facebook has kept that in mind when developing this experience. With Facebook shops, you can select your own fonts and colours, and of course the products that you want to feature. 

To summarise, it looks like Facebook used their ability to move fast and get this product launch ready at the right time to support small business owners. With that, however, it seems like many of the functionalities that makes this launch truly exciting is not yet in place. I am very much looking forward to see how these solutions develop over the next few months, and how business put them to use. 

You can read more about the launch here.