As social networks continue to work out how they can monetise, Facebook is following up on new ad and Page features introduced over the past year with a brand new shopping feature.
Users will be able to look at products listed by businesses on Pages and Groups in a new move that is almost certain to expand in the future.
News feeds
Facebook users can already find new products in various ways across the platform, with News Feeds, Pages and Groups all playing a part. The new shopping feature will be a single place to share and purchase products.
The new ideas were announced on the Facebook for Business blog, which has been the focus for the announcements of several product-selling features that the company has introduced recently.
The company said: “On Facebook we’ve seen that people are coming to our platform not only to connect with friends and family but also with products and brands.
“In fact, a survey suggested that nearly half of people come to Facebook to actively look for products, with a majority of them discovering new products in News Feed, Pages, and Groups.”
New features
Facebook has already launched the carousel format for ads, which allows a business to display multiple products in a single ad.
The company’s dynamic product ads give the flexibility for uploading a product catalogue and then letting Facebook decide when to show people the most relevant products for them. The functionality works along with the carousel format.
A more recent announcement concerned the testing of Canvas, described as a “new native way to browse from ads”, which will incorporate a new way of giving users a fast-loading, full-screen experience after clicking on an ad. Products can then be browsed before going to a business’s own website to buy items or services.
The blog explained: “This behaviour that’s already happening on Facebook gives us a chance to make people and marketers’ experiences better.
“We want to build native experiences that make it easier for both people to discover products on mobile and businesses to drive more sales. Some of our efforts are fully launched and are already creating value for people and businesses. Others are in early test phases. These tests will evolve as we get more feedback.”
