Facebook Launches Shopping Feature In Bid To Support SME's

After Instagram’s newly added feature aimed at supporting small businesses, Facebook recently launched Facebook Shops. This functionality gives businesses the opportunity to create an online store within Facebook or Instagram. Businesses who choose to do so will also be able to select the products they want to showcase and customise their online shop window.

Although Facebook already has a shopping feature called Marketplace, the latter is primarily aimed at individuals, allowing them to sell personal items in a similar way to GumTree. Facebook Shops, on the other hand, is designed for businesses, especially those businesses struggling to cope with the current economic situation.

So what is the aim? Obviously, supporting small businesses, but also enhancing user experience and providing a “seamless experience” as mentioned by Layla Amjadi, product manager at Facebook. For the social media platform, it’s also a way to boost advertising spend and to ensure that its main revenue stream survives the pandemic. Looking at the bigger picture, this new functionality will enable Facebook to acquire more knowledge and, therefore, gain more control over their users’ data through having access to our shopping history and even business inventory.

In the first place, people will be redirected to the merchant’s website to process the payments. In the second stage of this brand-new functionality, Facebook is hoping to launch an additional feature that will also allow people to perform in-app purchases, turning the social media platform into a fully integrated shop. As a result of direct account payments, the tech giant would also become a cheaper payment system as it means there would no longer be third-party payment provider fees.

On a financial point of view, we’re slowly drifting towards a world where social platforms take over the role of banks, as some platforms like WeChat already allow money transfers.

Eventually, Facebook will also implement the new shopping feature on Whatsapp along with the rest of the company’s messaging apps. Whether this new feature will help Facebook’s bottom line or not, here at Finesse, we’re convinced that it can benefit businesses or all sizes in multiple ways. With over 1.73 billion daily active users, Facebook has definitely unlocked a huge potential.

Do you think Facebook Shops would be a good fit for your business? We can help you set up and run your online shop. Get in touch!