Facebook To Launch Facebook Shop To Help Businesses Spring Back From COVID-19 Damage

Starting yesterday, users can buy products directly from an Instagram profile or a Facebook Page for business.

Before this latest change, Facebook and Instagram, to a certain degree, have already supported e-commerce. Facebook’s Marketplace has been around for some time and is projected to receive a big push with Libra cryptocurrency initiative. On Instagram, users can purchase products they see in ads or posts.

However, this change is bigger than all of these supports, with it, users can have a full-fledged Shop on Facebook.

The COVID-19 pandemic has initiated a shift in customers’ behavior. They are now more likely to come to these two social media platforms looking for merchandise or information on local stores and restaurants.

If stores offer delivery service or change it operating hours, the sure places they will go to make the information public are Instagram and Facebook. So now, when customers can directly make the purchase, they will no longer have to go to another site.

One of the reasons the company launched this new feature is to support small and medium business, those took the biggest hit as a result of COVID-19. They are also the most likely customers of the company’s advertising business.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, announced in a Facebook Live session yesterday that the change is to help businesses spring back from the economic damage done by the pandemic. However, he admitted that it could not undo everything businesses have been suffering.

However, Zuckerberg remarked the Facebook Shop feature would be of great help post-pandemic as even when COVID-19 is gone, people will continue shopping online.

According to Vishal Shah, vice president of product for Instagram, this is a huge experiment with over 1 million businesses onboard.

All these participants have to do is to upload their catalogs, pick out the featured products, choose accent colors and image cover. After that, their customers can see and buy from the shop.

As said by Dan Levy, the company’s vice president of ads, the real money will come from more ads, but the company will charge a small fee on each purchase. Levy and Shah said Shop would be consistent on both Instagram and Facebook. What is different is the way consumers know about the Shop, whether it is via a tagged product on Instagram or Facebook Marketplace.

There is another plan to launch Instagram Shop this summer, which allows users to see merchandise from Instagram Explore. Merchants can also benefit from the ability to connect Facebook Store’s live product videos. Consumers can also have loyalty program linked to their accounts.

The company also announced its partnership with BigCommerce, CedCommerce, Feedonomics, Woo, Cafe24, Shopify, Tienda Nube, and Channel Advisor.

Business owners will be able to leverage these platforms to manage ads associated with Shops and the Shops themselves.

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