Facebook Wants to Shake Up Your Shopping Experience

You may click Facebook’s iconic “Like” button when spotting something you fancy while browsing the social media network. But would you pull out a credit card right then and there?

Facebook is planning on it.

The company is working to add virtual storefronts to Facebook pages, which would enable users to make purchases within Facebook, instead of having to leave the website.

Facebook product marketing manager Emma Rodgers tells BuzzFeed News, which first reported this development:

“With the shop section on the page, we’re now providing businesses with the ability to showcase their products directly on the page.”

The shops feature is Facebook’s latest effort to expand its revenue generation beyond advertising.

In March, the company announced that it would enable its Messenger feature to facilitate money transfers between friends.

The shops feature may shake up the e-commerce industry as a whole, according to BuzzFeed:

If it works, bringing storefronts directly to Facebook Pages could have a transformative effect on online commerce, as retailers embrace the platform not just to inform their customers, but to sell directly to them.

The news of Facebook’s new effort broke the same day Google announced that it would start rolling out its own version of a “buy” button for shopping ads this month.

A post on Google’s blog about its AdWords product explains:

1 in 5 people swipe to interact with shopping ads, expressing a strong desire to learn more. So we’re rolling out a new enhancement that gently expands the shopping ads as you swipe, revealing information like product ratings and availability at a nearby store.

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