ISLAMABAD – Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebooklinkshopsyesterday, These Online Shops are free and easy to create. When you set upyour shop, it will appear on your Facebook and Instagram accounts to startand soon on Messenger and WhatsApp too.
This is a big development in the e-commerce world, now people will haveeasy and free access, they can start online business without any specialtechnical assistance. Mark Zuckerberg In his post discussed all thefeatures of Facebook Shops.
“I just announced that we’re launching Facebook Shops today – the basicidea is that any small business can easily start a shop to sell thingsdirectly across our apps. If you visit someone’s shop, you’ll be able tosee that small business’s story, see their featured products, and buy themin our apps.
I think this particularly important right now because so many smallbusinesses are moving online to deal with the economic fallout fromCovid-19. As people are being told to stay home, physical storefronts arehaving a hard time staying open and millions of people are losing theirjobs.
I’ve been personally working with our teams on Facebook Shops every day forthe last couple of months so we could accelerate launching it to smallbusinesses who could use tools like this now.
Facebook Shops are free and easy to create. When you set up your shop, itwill appear on your Facebook and Instagram accounts to start and soon onMessenger and WhatsApp too. Shops are native and fast, which means no moreapp-switching to a slow mobile web browser where you have to reenter yourcredit card when you tap on an interesting product you see in feeds.
We’re also working with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce,Channel Advisor, CedCommerce, Cafe24, Tienda Nube and Feedonomics so thatsmall businesses can easily integrate into a strong, open ecosystem oftools to help them manage their customer journey end-to-end, and it’s up tothe business to decide what level of integration they want.
On top of that, we’re building a bunch of features across our apps to helppeople discover things from small businesses that they might want to buy.
We’re building a dedicated shopping tab on Instagram and a destinationinside Explore where you can find and buy products you might be interestedin. Soon, we’ll also be launching new Live shopping features acrossFacebook and Instagram, which will allow you to shop on Live in real-time.
Lastly, in the near future Shops will use our AI and augmented reality techto create better shopping experiences. We’ll automatically identify and tagproducts in feeds so people can easily click-through to purchase when theyfind things they like.
Small businesses will also be able to personalize their storefronts tofirst show products that are most relevant to you and use augmented realityto let you virtually try on things like sunglasses, lipstick or makeup tosee how they might look on you before buying, or what furniture might looklike in your room.
This all adds up to something quite powerful. If you’re running a smallbusiness or you’re thinking of starting one – even from your living room –you now have a whole suite of tools available that can help you servepeople. You can build out your online presence across Facebook andInstagram.
You can use Messenger and WhatsApp to communicate with your customers. Youcan reach new customers through our ads. And now, you can also set up afull online store experience with Facebook Shops. All of these tools areopen for business, even when your physical storefront can’t be.
Hopefully, this helps relieve some of the pressure that small businessesare facing right now and helps them prepare for a more online future. Ilook forward to getting Shops into the world more widely — let us know whatyou think!