Facebook’s Buy button, which the company has been testing since last summer, is now going to be available to more merchants using the Shopify platform, according to TechCrunch. Attached to a News Feed, the button will allow consumers to buy products directly within the feed. The process will be faster if users have their payment details entered into the social networking website.
Why Facebook (FB) selected Shopify
Facebook tells TechCrunch that testing a buy button on Shopify will aid in understanding “how the feature can drive sales for a wide variety of merchants.” Also Facebook is seeking to find out which products, such as electronics, cars, fashion, etc., will generate the most of the sales.
Also Shopify provides the social networking firm with a standard e-commerce site upon which to build its buy button instead of accommodating a variety of e-commerce platforms. Facebook used a similar strategy during the testing of its payment details auto-fill feature when it made the feature available to all of the merchants on the e-commerce site Eckwid. Also Shopify dealers will be able to track their sales and the rest of their performance through Facebook’s analytics.
Facebook’s (FB) e-commerce efforts
Facebook has been experimenting with e-commerce for a while now. Initially, the company started a Gifts Store that allowed consumers to buy products directly and send them to their Facebook friends. The online store was not much of a success and was shut down, after which the company introduced the payment details auto-fill feature.
Now it is looking to promote sales of retailers’ products within its website. The recent development marks a significant effort toward the introduction of the buy button and is likely to increase the sales of merchants and ensure rapid purchases of products online. Moreover, the button demonstrates the company’s strategy to provide users with everything on its website so that users do not leave the platform.
In addition to Facebook, other companies are also looking to introduce parallel methods of in-line transactions. Pinterest recently announced the release of its “buying pins,” which enable a user to buy products directly from the website without getting redirected to a third-party dealer. In addition, Google is looking to launch something similar in its ads, while Twitter has been testing a purchase option within tweets since last year. However, Facebook has gotten most people’s attention as its precision ad targeting is going to attract a lot of dealers.
