When searching for a new coffeemaker online, Facebook is typically not the first site consumers visit.
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Because final payments aren’t made on Facebook, the company isn’t competing directly with advertisers’ existing e-commerce platforms. In 2009, Facebook started to allow businesses to sell items, but this didnt take off, signaling that although Facebook has more than a billion users, it perhaps isnt a destination where people want to shop.
Few users make purchases on mobile phones because it is slow and cumbersome, but Facebook hopes to win over more ad dollars by smoothing the process. “Marketers are challenged to reach their customers and drive sales on mobile”, the company said on its blog.
“For people, the mobile shopping experience is often hard to navigate”, Facebook wrote in Monday’s announcement. “This is bad for people and bad for marketers”.
The screenshot above also shows a search bar, which, in addition to giving you new ways to browse the feed, could also give Facebook new opportunities for keyword-based advertising. These ads will now support buyable products as well. In particular, the carousel format makes it easier to shop on a mobile device.
A Facebook survey showed that almost half of its users come to Facebook to actively look for products, so the company is giving them a way to zero in on things to buy.
Facebook is also testing a format called “canvas”, created to help retailers whose potential customers walk away after clicking on ads because their mobile Web sites take too long to load.
The first new shopping option for businesses is Canvas, which uses the popular carousel ad format.
For now, Facebook won’t be including its Buy button in the ad unit, but you can bet that that will eventually be added. She also suggested this is a way for the company to give users a single place to browse the different products being showcased across the social network.
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That said, only a small group of retailers – and they must have signed up for Facebook’s Product Pages at the very least – will be able to list their items, and the trial is now limited to a small set of test users. “Their products will be eligible to appear there”. Facebook said it is looking into including other content within the shopping feed, including items listed for sale within Facebook Groups.
