Facebook is one step closer to getting you to live your entire life within the walls of the social networking platform.
The company is testing a new shopping service that allows users to shop and buy items directly on business Pages, Facebook told Buzzfeed this week. The new feature essentially gives retailers the ability to turn their Page into a mini boutique — and do all the buying and selling from within the walls of the platform. The new service is reportedly being tested with a small group of users and only a few retail and e-commerce companies, before it’s rolled out to a wider audience.
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How it works
The new shopping feature will be compatible with business Pages on both mobile and desktop. On mobile, it will show up as a new ‘shopping’ section on the company’s Page, while on desktop, the new feature will appear as a tab on the Page — just as the Timeline, About and other tabs currently appear.
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Users will be able to click on a Page’s shopping section and scroll through all of its available products. Then each company will have the option of allowing the checkout transactions to occur within Facebook or redirect customers to its website.
Here’s how the new feature will appear for users.
Facebook also recently released its new peer-to-peer payments service on the Messenger app — allowing users to send friends money directly from within the platform. There’s no word on whether Facebook will make any money off of the new shopping transactions, however, it’s one more step toward the company’s goal of keeping users within its apps and website as much as possible.
