Facebook and Instagram adds ‘Shops’ for online Retailers
Facebook, the Silicon Valley-headquartered social networking firm, on Tuesday, May 19, announced that it is adding shopfronts for businesses to list their wares, along with a host of other e-commerce functionality across its apps.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, the basic idea is that any small business can easily start a shop to sell things directly across Facebook and Instagram.
“Our goal is to make shopping seamless and empower anyone from a small business owner to a global brand to use our apps to connect with customers,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the new product.
The ‘shops’ will be free for businesses to access, with the expectation that the tool will boost consumer engagement and ad sales just like other Facebook’s e-commerce features.
“Our business model here is ads,” Zuckerberg said. “So rather than charge businesses for Shops, we know that Shops are valuable for businesses. They’re going to in general bid more for ads and we’ll eventually make money that way.”
It is expected that the new feature will create digital storefronts on the social network, where online sellers can host “catalogs” of their products, and will either link out to places to buy the products or allow users to purchase them directly on Facebook.
With lockdowns forcing hundreds of millions of people to stay home, adding deeper shopping functionality to Facebook gives it an opportunity to benefit from the vast increase in online shopping suddenly occurring.
