Facebook is turning pages into an online mall

“The new features for Pages reflect our belief that no matter if you’re a plumbing company, a flower shop, a non-profit or a brand, your Page should house the information people are looking for, help you communicate with your customers, and support your unique goals“, Facebook said in a press statement according to Mashable. After the new update, the Pages section would have additional features namely, Shop and Services tabs and an improved “Call to Action” button.

The giant social network said Tuesday that it’s adding features to make it easier for these businesses that maintain “pages” on Facebook to get noticed by and respond to consumers, especially on mobile devices.

“Now we’re beginning to add new sections to pages, so different types of businesses can prominently feature the information that is most relevant to their organisation”.

In an effort to live up to the claims that Facebook Pages are the ideal web platform for businesses, new customization options have been added to make Pages feel more like websites.

The announcements are the latest in Facebook’s courtship of small businesses, some 45 million of whom have a Facebook page to connect with consumers.

Almost twice as many Thai users send Facebook messages to businesses each month than the global average.

The idea is that Facebook can start making money from Messenger – and potentially Pages – once it’s a natural place for people and businesses to interact.

Facebook doesn’t just want to be a social network. Citing comScore data, Facebook said that 75% of mobile time is spent in four mobile apps, one of which is Facebook. Rather than having to build an app, get people to download it, and then get them to use it, WeChat lets businesses create “official accounts” that users can easily follow and buy from. These sections may also be useful to businesses in other categories, so we may see the feature rolled out more widely in the future.

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The best features for small businesses are the way Facebook can target people. Facebook opened up “saved replies” – drafted responses to frequently asked questions – and response rate banners – tags on frequency in answering customer inquiries – to all page owners.

So Facebook has stepped up its outreach to small businesses. Between April and May of this year, the airline said it counted almost $1 million in airline tickets purchased directly as a result of people using its Facebook page. This kind of cross-platform optimization would be tough for a business to do on its own, but Facebook makes it happen automatically.

Vallas says Facebook’s recent updates to its advertising products, including allowing businesses to use carousel ads or dynamic product ads that can be retargeted based on traffic to a business’ own website, are part of the same trend.

What Facebook pages may not be able to compete with, however, is a company’s discovery on search – something that has become the niche of review site Yelp and app Foursquare.