Facebook launches new commerce tools and shopping experiences
Facebook is on a quest to build the world’s largest shoppable social media platform, where billions of items can be bought and sold in one place.
Today’s announcement details how consumers are continuing to embrace shopping online and builds on the momentum of Facebooks’ introduction of Shops, just over a year ago. Facebook is now adding Shops to WhatsApp, and to Marketplace on Facebook.
Director of retail for Facebook Australia, Kate Box
Director of retail for Facebook Australia, Kate Box, said: “Instagram and Facebook are a new Westfield. We are making the online shopping journey more personalised, more entertaining, and more seamless. Capabilities like shoppable media, branded content, social shopping and messenger for customer service are available in Australia.
“As today’s announcements scale globally, AI and AR will further evolve how customers discover products they love. Australian’s will be able to find products online, with visual search and try-on immersive experiences available before making a purchase. Shopping across our platforms is brimming with new innovation.”
There are currently more than 1.2 million monthly active Shops and over 300 million monthly Shops visitors.
Facebook’s new innovations in AI and AR will allow consumers to discover and visualise products (Visual Search) with try-on immersive experiences (AR ‘Try On’) before making a purchase.
Live Shopping is something small businesses already do in Australia and New Zealand, but it’s challenging to handle a large scale of sales while Live.
Instagram and Facebook are bringing new tools to enable large businesses to scale product sales in Live Shopping.
Instagram and Facebook are also making the shopping journey more personalised. Businesses will be able to offer tailored shopping experiences based on the customers preferences through a curated collection from their Shop, their website, or even through special promotions.
Chief executive officer of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg detailed new commerce innovations and experiences for shoppers in an announcement this morning.
“The first big announcement for today is [that] we’re bringing Shops to more places…. The next thing that we’re announcing that I think [will] be a pretty big deal is introducing Shops ads that [will] provide a personalised ads experience based on people’s individual shopping preferences. We’re launching the ability for a business to send shoppers to where you’re going to be most likely to make a purchase based on your shopping behaviour.”
Zuckerberg added: “A lot of shopping discovery begins with visual discovery, right, so you see something that you think is awesome. And then, you know, maybe you want to see other products that are like that, or you want to figure out how to get that product.
“And this is the type of problem that AI can really help out with. [So] one of the things we’re going to do is when you’re on Instagram…We’re getting ready to start rolling out experience and testing an experience that we’re calling visual search.”
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topics
ai
AR
artificial intelligence
Chief executive officer of Facebook
commerce tools
Director of retail for Facebook Australia
Facebook
Innovation
Kate Box
Mark Zuckerberg
shopping experiences
