Facebook Shops: What Is It and How Brands Can Use It

This year, brands are increasingly bringing shopping experiences online.

But, as businesses develop online strategies, they might find that launching a fully-fledged ecommerce website is easier said than done. While many tools make this process easier than it was in past decades, launching a successful online store still requires time, money, a web strategy, and a handful of other resources that smaller businesses might not have.

Luckily, tech giants like Facebook are actively launching tools that aim to help smaller brands convert social media followers into customers.

One of the Facebook corporation’s newest ecommerce tools is called Facebook Shops. According to Facebook, Shops enables businesses to easily create a “mobile shopping experience for their audiences.” But, what exactly does this experience look like?

In this post, I’ll walk you through what Facebook Shops is and how marketers can leverage it to boost social media-driven sales in 2020 and beyond.

According to Facebook, setting up a Shop is simple and can be done on a desktop. Once a Shop is created, Facebook or Instagram Business Page followers on desktop or mobile platforms can visit the same universal store and make purchases from the app’s they’re on.

On top of linking to business pages on Instagram and Facebook, Shops can also be integrated into a Facebook Business account’s Messenger or a WhatsApp Business account so audiences on all major Facebook platforms can make purchases.

Below is a short demo video that highlights what a Facebook Shop looks like to customers on a Facebook-owned platform and how they can use it to make purchases.

Why Facebook Launched Shops

Before 2020, brands were already looking for ways to scalably make sales online. But, the need for digital transformation grew even stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic when many brick-and-mortar stores were forced to close or move their offerings online.

According to a Facebook announcement, the 2020 landscape was a motivating factor in the launch of Shops.

“Right now many small businesses are struggling, and with stores closing, more are looking to bring their business online. Our goal is to make shopping seamless and empower anyone from a small business owner to a global brand to use our apps to connect with customers,” Facebook noted in an announcement. “That’s why we’re launching Facebook Shops and investing in features across our apps that inspire people to shop and make buying and selling online easier.”

Now that you know what Facebook Shops is and why Facebook launched the tool, you might be interested in using it for your own business.

If so, below is a quick step-by-step guide for setting up your first Facebook Shop.

How to Use Facebook Shops

1. Make sure you’ve fulfilled all the Facebook Shops requirements.

Although creating a Facebook Shop is free for all businesses, Facebook Shops still has a few requirements. To set up a Facebook Shop for your brand, you must: