Facebook Pages (Credit: http://fbtutorial.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/facebook-pages.png)
Time for small businesses with Facebook Pages to start making money from what they know how to do best. Facebook is rolling out two new sections—Shopping and Services to Pages to promote goods and services that every merchant can sell.
The Shopping section, according to Venturebeat, will let businesses list their products and allow customers to put in an offer through Messenger. The Services section will let small businesses do similar thing, but this time around, offer services to customers/clients. If you own a business Page on Facebook, you can now list prices, along with photos and description of what you want your customers/clients to buy from you.
With more than 60 million businesses on the platform, adding two new sections to help them make money will further cement Facebook’s position as the most attractive place to show the world what you have got. People sign up and visit the platform every day for different reasons, including buying and selling—and things just got more interesting on the business front.
Services Section (Credit: http://1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ServicesSection2.png)
While the Services section will be available to all professionals on Facebook in the next couple of weeks, the Shop section is already rolling out to businesses in countries like Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, India, Argentina, and Taiwan to start with.
The connection with Messenger
It is easy to understand why actual sales will be operated via Facebook Messenger—the feature is designed to help small businesses as well as individual merchants. Small businesses usually deal with customers on a one-on-one basis, which basically explains the use of the standalone chat app. It is pretty difficult to see how big merchant sites who don’t usually sell one-on-one would be able to sell via Messenger because of the large volume of sales they make every day.
The new feature also brings you in direct contact with your customers/clients—thereby encouraging engagement. New deals can be struck using the feature, while existing customers can be retained too. Of course, not every business has a website, which pretty much solves a lot of issues.
It means you no longer need to visit the webpage of an online shop to get what you want since you can do that on Facebook. Besides being a more convenient way to get what you want on Facebook, it also saves you time.
With 1.7 billion people visiting Facebook every other day, small businesses without websites can now close sales without spending extra. It is such a brilliant move by Facebook, and will encourage more business presence on the platform.
An independent study carried out by Infosys in 2014, showed that retailers would rather engage with retailers on Facebook than with brand’s official websites. 90 percent of consumers who took part in the sturdy said social media engagement has a huge effect on brand spend. The also study showed how brands are having a hard time building a reliable, tailored online and offline experience that drives more sales.
Got something to say about the story? Please share it in the comment section.
