Commerce Is Coming: Facebook To Test Shopping Within Pages

Facebook wants you to use the network for keeping up with friends, staying abreast on news and now to shop? According to a BuzzFeed report, Facebook is building shops within Facebook Pages — something still in a test phase.

The Facebook Pages will feature micro e-commerce experiences with the entire shopping experience occurring within Facebook itself. According to the reports, the shops will appear directly underneath the “about” section, as shown in the mocked-up example above.

Last year, Facebook debuted the buy button; a beefier commerce experience is a natural extension of this functionality. Other reports have shown that the traffic coming from Facebook is the most apt to result in purchases compared with traffic from any other social site, further cementing the possibility of this test. 

“With the shop section on the page, we’re now providing businesses with the ability to showcase their products directly on the page” — Emma Rodgers, Facebook product marketing manager

Commerce on Facebook could be a very powerful addition, both for the company and its advertisers. Having the ability to harness Facebook’s fantastic ad targeting features to drive qualified users to a contained shopping environment would be huge for retailers. Additionally, Facebook would then be in a position to take a percentage of product sales if they ever wanted to (They don’t currently take a cut, nor is this been rumored).

For the full report, see BuzzFeed.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)