Facebook is rolling out a new tab in its main app called Facebook Shop. The company had introduced a similar tab on Instagram in July after it announced Facebook Shops — its feature to turn pages into stores — in May.
The social media company’s idea is to offers a marketplace for creators and boutique brands to provide an easy way to conduct business. Previously on Facebook, you could see these pages selling items you might be interested in, but you might not go to their website and buy it. Now, you can do it all on the Facebook app.
Facebook’s AI team has applied various models on this service including computer vision to categorize each product by identifying the brand, color, design, and style. So, if you’re searching for a particular item with a specific color, you can get accurate results.
Along with this, the company is introducing more tools for businesses to customize their pages on Shops such as new layout for featuring single or group of products, new insights page, and a real-time preview of collections design.
Plus, the company is rolling out support for Checkout on Instagram and Facebook across the US. Checkout is a tool that helps people shop inside Instagram or Facebook without leaving the app. It also remembers your payment information, so you don’t need to enter it again.
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The social network is also introducing support for you to chat with these businesses on Facebook Shops through Messenger, Instagram Direct, or WhatsApp. It said that while it’s currently only testing the feature with Messenger and Instagram Direct, an option for WhatsApp will also be added soon.
In India, Facebook recently partnered with Reliance Jio to let customers order groceries through WhatsApp.
The company noted its own study to point out that 85% of people worldwide are shopping online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And rolling out new shopping features means that at least some of those people living in the US might buy stuff through its platform.
A lot of brands have a significant social media presence on Facebook and Instagram. Introducing new tabs for customers to easily look at these brands’ products and purchase goods without leaving the platform is a major win for the company.
All new features will start rolling out across the US starting today.
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