Businesses can now set 'Shops' on Facebook

In their ongoing efforts to make Facebook Pages the most valuable online presence for businesses around the world, the social media giant announced two new features.

Intended to help businesses drive the actions that matter to them, Facebook has rolled out two new Page sections, a services section and a shop section. Businesses on Facebook are thriving as globally, more than one billion people on Facebook and in India, more than 57% of people are connected to at least one business.

As Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook mentioned during Q2 2016 Earnings interviews regarding Messenger, "Our focus right now is overwhelmingly on the consumer experience. We’re really looking at the organic activity that’s happening between businesses and consumers,” noting that 1 billion messages of that nature are being sent per month on Messenger.

The shop section provides businesses with a new way to prominently display the products they wish to sell on their Page and allows people to easily discover, browse and make offers to purchase products through messaging from the businesses they care about. This feature is now available to all Pages in Southeast Asia and other high growth and emerging markets.

The top 10 countries where Shop section is used on Pages: Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, India, Argentina, and Taiwan.

The services section on Pages, allows service businesses such as plumbers and spas to showcase a list of their offerings on their Page. This makes it easier for users to find the information they are looking for and decide further action. The services section is now available globally to professional services pages (and to all pages in the coming weeks).

"With the shops and services sections on pages, businesses around the world can help people discover the products and services they care about in a more visually appealing way." -Adrian Nam, Product Marketing Manager at Facebook.

“The shops and services sections are a continuation of our efforts to make Facebook Pages the most valuable online presence for the more than 60 million businesses around the world that use Pages each month.” –Ryan Ebanks, Product Marketing Manager at Facebook.

The SMB statistics in India are overwhelming with over 2 million SMB Pages on Facebook in India as of October 2015 and more than 1.99 billion interactions generated between businesses and people in India.