Facebook: From social network to shopping network

Facebook has begun rolling out two new feature- ‘Shop’ and ‘Services’ to make it simple for businesses and brands to promote and sell its products on the platform.

With more than 60 million businesses on its platform, the move is aimed at making the pages section more useful for them. With the shop section, businesses can display products they’re selling on their page, which will enable customers to not only search for items but make offers through Facebook Messenger.

The Services section allows businesses to do exactly the same in regard to the services they provide. This particular function is currently only available to professional services providers, but will receive a general roll-out in the coming weeks.

Commenting on the roll-out of the feature, Ryan Ebanks, Product Marketing Manager, Facebook adds, “The shops and services sections are a continuation of our efforts to make Facebook Pages the most valuable online presence for the more than 60 million businesses around the world that use Pages each month.”

The new sections are currently being made available in high growth and emerging markets, including the likes of Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, India, Argentina, and Taiwan. The e-commerce hub will be rolled out to other brand pages and professional service providers in the coming months.

Alongside its integration of bots, these new features mark Facebook’s latest bid to boost business and customer engagement on its platform. The end goal will likely be to stop users from navigating to external websites for retail purposes.

Smaller businesses will stand to benefit the most from the new sections, as they counteract the need for a website altogether. Additionally, with both Facebook (for mobile) and Facebook Messenger boasting a billion users each, it could expose businesses to an untapped customer base.In the past, Facebook only permitted select businesses to sell products by creating paid ads.