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A major new push into the e-commerce world will bring a new feature, Instagram shopping tab, shoppable live streams, and much more. Here's all about Facebook launching shops to encourage more businesses online during this pandemic.

Facebook is making all new major new push into the e-commerce. The company has announced about the launch of shops, a new way for businesses to set up their free storefronts on Facebook and Instagram under the heading of Facebook shop and Instagram shop. The shops that will be powered by the third-party services, including company websites like Shopify, BigCommerce, Woo, etc. are designed to revolutionize the social network world into a top tier shopping destination for businesses in today's modern world.

Retail has greatly been crushed because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has closed real-world shops, disrupted the supply chains, and left more than 36 million people in America, jobless.

They said that they really hope that the country's commerce solutions help businesses not only survive but thrive during the coming tough months, and adapt to the new consumer behavior. This was said by the Instagram Shopping product lead, Layla Amjadi.

In a live stream, the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg states that Ecommerce sector would be very imperative to begin rebuilding the economy back to where it was while the pandemic continues for months and months to come. “If you can’t physically open up your store or restaurant, you can take orders online and ship them to people,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of small and medium businesses that never had online businesses getting online for the first time and this makes us happy.”

The launch of the Facebook shop and Instagram shop comes just like stay-at-home orders that are related to the COVID-19 pandemic all across the world and have led to record sales for the e-commerce companies. The pandemic has also been greatly devastating for small businesses and start-ups, with a third of them reporting that they have infact stopped operating in a survey conducted by Facebook and the Small Business Roundtable.. An additional of eleven percent people say that they could fail within the next three months if the current situation continues for longer.

But no one can deny that online sales have been a bright spot for all those small businesses out there. At various companies, were solo entrepreneurs have leaned hard into knitting fabric face masks and baking cakes and pastries for sale, revenue has rather doubled if observed from three years ago. Facebook is infact betting that bringing more local businesses online will really help them to endure and consequently also creating big new business opportunities for Facebook Company itself.

While Facebook shop and Instagram shop are free to create, they could create significant new business opportunities for the company. Be it in advertising, payments, and or other services, it's a win win situation for one and all. Businesses will be able to buy advertisements for their shops, and when people use Facebook’s checkout option, it would charges them a minimal fee.

Zuckerberg said that Shops will enhance on the standard web commerce experience by storing the users’ payment credentials and other important information in a single place that they can then use on any app that is Facebook or Instagram storefront. At present there are more than 160 million small scale businesses using the company’s apps and profiting from it in some or the other great ways.

Shops can be found on the tab of businesses’ Facebook pages and Instagram profiles, and they can also appear in the stories or be promoted through the advertisements. Items that online business have made available for purchase will automatically appear within the specific shop, and users can either save items or place an order for the same. Some businesses enable users to make direct purchases on Facebook app, while others will take you to the business’s official website to complete the payment transaction.

Businesses can be very well handle customer support issues through the applications- WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Eventually, the company plans to give you an access to browse store catalogs and make purchases directly from the chat window itself without getting into hassles. The company also plans to enable shopping from live streams, allowing brands and creators of the product sale to tag items from their Facebook and Instagram catalogs so that they appear on the bottom of the live videos for easy availability.

Facebook is also working side by side to integrate loyalty programs with these shops. “You’ll be able to see and keep track of points and rewards,” the company said in a blog post to the online business that will get associated with them. Facebook Company has been dabbling in commerce for years and in 2016, it introduced Marketplace, a one stop destination within the app for peer-to-peer buying and selling of products. Two years later that is in 2018, Instagram began working on a standalone shopping app, though it was later abandoned for some reasons. Instead, last year that is in 2019, Instagram added an in-app checkout feature.

Shops will very soon begin rolling out on Facebook today in the United States and are coming to Instagram sometime this summer. Instagram will showcase top new brands on its existing shop account, which already highlights the items that are available for purchase and sale. Later in the year, it plans on to add a dedicated shopping tab of its own to its navigation bar which will really revolutionize the world of online business.