Facebook is adding a shopping section to its social network as part of test for a big e-commerce push.
A dedicated shopping feed to give people a place to find products outside their News Feeds and an expansion to merchants of an immersive ad unit that will give people a fast-loading full-screen catalogue of items to buy.
Meanwhile, the company is also offering an update to its mobile canvas ads platform, which show full-screen snippets of an advertiser’s website when you click on them from your News Feed. These ads will now support buyable products as well.
That said, only a small group of retailers – and they must have signed up for Facebook’s Product Pages at the very least – will be able to list their items, and the trial is currently limited to a small set of test users.
Facebook is clearly expecting people to eventually do much of their shopping via social networks. While the company calls both of these updates tests, many – if not most – Facebook tests tend to eventually resurface at some point or another
For now, Facebook won’t be including its Buy button in the ad unit.
Facebook Said also:
With over one billion people visiting Pages every month, people are already turning to Pages to learn more about businesses. That’s why we’re adding more ways for Page owners to showcase their products to people, including a recently announced Shop section. Businesses can choose to have this section link to their own retail websites, or they can test a way for people to buy directly on their Pages.