Facebook Continues Shopping Push, Adds Dedicated Shopping Section

When searching for a new coffeemaker online, Facebook is typically not the first site consumers visit.

Facebook is hoping that the smoother experience will make mobile shopping more attractive to web surfers, who still do most of their shopping on desktop despite spending an increasing portion of their Internet time on smartphones. “Marketers are challenged to reach their customers and drive sales on mobile”, the company said on its blog. The jury is still out on whether people want to shop where they socialize, but like Twitter and Pinterest, Facebook is moving ahead. “Customers can experience slow load times and too many steps on the way to checkout”.

Facebooks mobile ad revenue is now 76% of its total ad revenue, or $2.9 billion, and the social network is looking to combine commerce and advertising to potentially boost those numbers even further.

Facebook has been fervently trying to change that with ads that place more emphasis on prodding users into taking action – whether it be buying a product, signing up for a company newsletter or downloading an app. In general, it’s doing this by absorbing features that would’ve previously required loading a separate page for an advertiser website.

The blog post also outlined the various forays Facebook has made into eCommerce the past year, including carousel format for ads, which showcase multiple product images and links in one ad. According to Facebook, advertisers have seen a 30 percent to 50 percent decline in cost-per conversion for ads using the carousel format. We’ve been testing Canvas with a number of businesses since we first unveiled this in June.

Facebook is also creating a central hub for users to shop for products on the social network.

According to Financial Post, Facebook has added a new section on its app that lets users go to the shopping page and browse among several brands from a select group of small businesses.

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. “Their products will be eligible to appear there”. Facebook says that additional products will be listed there, including any items listed for sale in a Facebook group that a user has joined.