20 Jul What Brands Should Know about Facebook and Instagram Shops
The Current Online Shopping Landscape
In response to the global pandemic, buyers significantly have shifted their consumption behaviors. A recent study from the Boston Consulting Group found that eCommerce has grown more in the last eight weeks than in the decade before that. Younger users who have grown up with digital shopping options are more readily adapting to this behavior, meaning the shift away from physical shopping may intensify.
Moreover, a report from GlobalWebIndex found that 46% of internet users say they’ll be shopping online more after the coronavirus outbreak is over, and over 1 in 4 internet users (27%) say they’ll be researching/browsing more items online before they shop in-store.
Facebook and Instagram Shops Overview
To help businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook has introduced Shops with the intent to help boost online commerce for small business owners. While the rollout is geared towards smaller accounts, shops allow businesses of any size to set up an online store for customers to access on both Facebook and Instagram. Businesses can choose the products they want to feature from their product catalog and then customize the look and feel of their shop.
People can find Facebook Shops on a business’ Facebook Page or Instagram profile, or they may discover them through stories or ads. From there, users will be able to browse, save products, and place an order — either on the business’ website or without leaving the app if the business has enabled checkout in the US. Later this year, Instagram is also adding a new shop tab in the navigation bar, so users can access Instagram Shop in just one tap.
Facebook and Instagram Shops Availability
Shops will initially be available to accounts that are already utilizing an Instagram or Facebook Shop page, with a broader rollout happening throughout the rest of this year. Pages will slowly be converted over the next several months to this new Shops experience via an in-app notification when it is available to them. Creating a Shop is free.
What Shops Mean for Brands
With Facebook and Instagram Shops, brands have the opportunity to reach more customers online and drive lower-funnel activity. By adding buying capabilities to existing social media messaging, you can encourage more purchasing actions from your consumers in a way that naturally integrates with their existing online activity.
Instagram also announced that they’re testing a ‘Shops’ tab globally with selected users. This will be the heart icon, i.e the activity tab, at the bottom of your navigation. Viewing the Shops tab will take you to the existing shopping experience within Instagram, with a listing of posts that have Shopping Tags added via approved sellers.
There may also be an opportunity to test Live Shopping once the feature is launched. This would allow you to feature and tag and array of products that fans could shop for in real-time.
Getting Started with Shops
If you’d like to begin the process of setting up Facebook and Instagram Shops, the links below outline the requirements.
We are closely watching how Facebook decides to evolve and emphasize shopping on their platforms. To stay in the know about this trend and others, be sure to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Social You Should Know.
