There’s no denying that the onset of Covid-19 has accelerated digital adoption by at least 5 years. With the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, the ecosystem of consumerism, be it luxury, retail or daily essentials is now being operated from one’s mobile phone. Facebook seized this opportunity to disrupt the e-commerce ecosystem in May earlier this year, by launching a personalised, seamless, free, digital shop for SMB’s and established brands alike, to connect with their customers virtually. Facebook Shops aims to realise the vision of ‘Social Commerce’ aka a mobile-first shopping experience platform where businesses can effortlessly create an online store on Facebook and Instagram, have control over their brand’s marketing, advertising and customer experience. ?With Facebook Shops, SMEs and brands can connect with shoppers in their virtual habitat, while exploring the revolutionary potential of personalised, content-based shopping experiences. ?Shops is one of Facebook’s many disruptive masterstrokes and it will be interesting to see how it performs against the heavy weights such as Amazon.

Discovery aka More Revenue from Facebook Ads

With it’s 1.7 billion active users, Facebook’s vast access to user data ranging from knowing your political views, to your grandma’s birthday, makes it a very tempting platform for SMB’s and established brands to spend on Facebook Ads to accelerate discovery of their products. Over and above offering support to sellers with a high search engine ranking, more authentic traffic, easy ROI tracking, flaunt-worthy business metrics and targeted ads. For homegrown brands, this can be a fresh opportunity to make a mark by leveraging social media to fulfil not only brand awareness objectives but sales and revenue too.

? Consideration with Content Commerce
When user’s discovered a brand through influencer marketing, celebrity collaborations, stickers and filters on any of Facebook’s platforms, they were directed usually to it’s website. In this model, the user lands directly on the brand’s Shop where brand’s have complete control over their brand look, feel, narrative with customisable fonts and colours and most importantly control on the catalogue they want to showcase. Brands can interact with customers still offering them a personalised experience in real time through all of Facebook’s platforms, WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram Direct Messages to offer support and more.

? Purchase: ?Change the Field
In November 2019, Facebook launch?ed Facebook Pay, a convenient, secure and consistent payment experience across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp?. ?Facebook Pay could potentially garner adoption in two ways: one where Facebook convinces e-tailers to enable Pay as a payment option or builds a platform that e-tailers would proactively want to use that is tightly integrated with their payment solution. It only makes sense for them to go with the latter. ?This is Facebook’s classic game that I’d like to call: “change the field” instead of “competing in the game”. They did the same thing with their ad business, when they didn’t want to enter the arena of keyword-based ads, dominated by Google, they simply created a new arena, one based entirely on interest-based advertising.

? Retention and Advocacy
With the information collected, Facebook will use this data to show consumers more “relevant content and ads”. For example, if you buy a shirt on Shops through Facebook Pay, you will start seeing ads for jeans and related accessories. Moreover the Shops ecosystem will also assist SMB’s with loyalty programs, live shopping experiences and a lot more to build the brand’s advocacy.