An Overview of Facebook Shops

A key selling point of Facebook Shops is the native integration with messaging platforms. If a potential customer is browsing your shop on Facebook and they have a question, they can seamlessly ask for help directly through Facebook. After purchasing from your store, customers can track the shipping of their order through Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messages, and even WhatsApp.

An effective loyalty program system is expected and, by June 2020, was already under development. This means if you run an E-commerce business that sells consumable goods, you can offer discounts to incentivize repeat purchases. A strong loyalty program could potentially supplement or even replace the need for Facebook Ads retargeting campaigns.

How is Facebook Shops monetized? The platform charges sellers modest processing and transaction fees, like other E-commerce platforms such as Shopify. This will deter various sellers whose product offerings have slim margins, but the marketing potential of Facebook’s enormous audience will likely rationalize usage of the technology.

Instagram Shop is expected to be released to the public this Summer. Like Facebook Shops, users can undertake the entire shopping process from within the Instagram app. At first, Instagram users will be able to browse products in the Explore tab. If they see something they like, they can also tap the product to further compare sizes, colors, and other attribute variations.

We are all aware that influencer marketing has taken over Instagram. One might think that Instagram influencers could feel threatened by Instagram Shop because of social commerce saturation. On the contrary, influencers will likely benefit from the Instagram Shop.

Influencers will be able to link the products they are incentivized to promote, directly to the product’s associated Instagram Shop page. This is expected to drastically increase click-through-rates for influencer-promoted merchandise and provide easier implementation to more accurate metrics for sellers who hire influencers.

One of our favorite features of Facebook Shops is the augmented reality (AR) integration. Apparel companies can benefit from this to a massive extent. Shoppers can “try on” clothing or accessories by using their augmented camera to view what they would look like with that product. All of this can be done without ever leaving the Facebook Shops platform.

This is ideal for products where factors such as skin tone matching are an issue (makeup). It can also be utilized in the jewelry industry—jewelry marketing is rapidly evolving even without AR integration. This new capability for shoppers is expected to have a huge impact on not only the pricing, timing, and amount of purchases, but the entire purchasing process as well. Facebook Shops’ augmented reality is expected to be available for larger goods such as furniture that will utilize more than a person’s face or body , like an entire room or house, in the near future too.

Shopify sellers are now able to automatically connect their preexisting e-commerce shopping site to Facebook Shops. Before linking your Shopify store to Facebook Shops, make sure that your Shopify store’s collections and categories are organized in an attractive manner. This will bring about a cleaner transition and will save you time when optimizing your store on the backend of Facebook Shops. If you use a Shopify website, it’s critical to do the organization there first to save time double-optimizing your stores as those changes will correspond to your Facebook Shop store.

As a full-service digital marketing agency, SunCity Advising staff are replete with Facebook marketing expertise. We have helped numerous clients grow their E-commerce sales (and businesses in general) by running and optimizing Facebook ad campaigns, while also managing organic social media on Facebook, Instagram, and other social accounts.

Social media management services can provide a brand lift as well as targeted conversions that directly drive revenue. Let us know if we can help you get started or improve your existing social presence.

Facebook Shops is also planning to directly integrate with Facebook Ads. This integration feature is expected to be released in 2020. Leveraging Facebook Ads with Facebook Shops can create an ROI-boosting synergy, if done correctly. The time to start planning your Facebook sales & marketing strategy is now! Contact SunCity Advising today for a free Facebook Shops and Facebook Ads consultation.