Facebook has launched a number of updates to its shopping experience for both Facebook and Instagram today. After debuting “Facebook Shops” back in May there is now a dedicated section in the app for shopping while Instagram is opening up its Checkout and Live Shopping features to all sellers in the US. Today’s changes also bring new tools to help businesses with e-commerce.
Reported by TechCrunch, Facebook detailed the latest changes to shopping across its platforms in a blog post titled “Making It Easier to Shop and Sell on Our Apps.”
The biggest change for Facebook is a new section in the app called “Facebook Shop.” The hub is aiming to make it easy for customers to find items and businesses they already love as well as discovering new ones. Facebook Shop comes after the company started testing Instagram Shop in July.
Today we’re introducing Facebook Shop, a new place to discover businesses and shop for products in the Facebook app. Facebook Shop makes it easy for people to find products from businesses they love, discover new ones and make purchases, all in one place. We just started testing this in the US and we launched a complementary shopping destination on Instagram in July, called Instagram Shop, where people can discover and buy products from creators and brands, all in one place.
Along with the user facing changes, Facebook is also releasing new e-commerce tools for businesses:
These new features give businesses more control over how their digital storefront looks and make creating new collections easier. These include:
- New design layouts for featuring single products or groups of products in Shops
- Real-time preview of collections as they are designed
- The ability to automatically create Shops for new sellers
- New insights to measure results in Commerce Manager
Meanwhile, Instagram is set to open up its Checkout feature for all sellers using the “Shops” platform in the US. It first launched last year as a test with major brands.
In the coming weeks, all eligible sellers in the US will be able to start using checkout on Instagram. Checkout makes it easy for people to make a purchase in just a few taps, without leaving the app. To use checkout, businesses must have Shops and use Facebook Commerce Manager or our partners Shopify and BigCommerce. We’ll support more platform partners soon.
And to help small businesses out during the pandemic, Facebook is “waiving selling fees for businesses through the end of the year.”
Facebook also highlights that its Live Shopping feature is available to any business or creator in the US that’s already using the Checkout feature.
With Live Shopping, we’re making it easier for people to shop in real time. We’ve been testing this feature on both Facebook and Instagram, and now Facebook Live Shopping includes new features to help businesses easily set up a live experience featuring products from their Shop and sell directly from the video. Instagram Live Shopping is now available to all businesses and creators using checkout in the US.
Learn more about all the e-commerce changes on Facebook and Instagram in the company’s announcement post here.
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