Facebook Introduces Buy Buttons For Shopify Retailers On News Feed

Facebook has been experimenting with the idea of a Buy Button functionality in its pages, even testing its with a few selected merchants. But now, the social media giant is opening it up to Shopify retailers.

This is significant news because by having Buy Buttons open for use by Shopify merchants, Facebook could topple the first domino in having a full selling and shopping dynamic within its pages. This ultimately means that Facebook users, and most web surfers for that matter, will no longer have to get out of Facebook when they need to buy something. As for Facebook, it gets closer and closer to achieving its goal of optimum user engagement. 

Moreover, Facebook is now competing with Pinterest, another social media platform that just recently introduced its own Buyable Pins functionality, which lets visitors to Pinterest boards buy items directly via pins.

Specifically, the Buy Buttons can be displayed in Facebook Page Posts as well as in Promoted Post ads run by Shopify retailers. As for Facebook users, they no longer have to click through to the website of vendors in order to shop for items, they just need to use the Buy Button which will lead to a checkout process within the News Feed. To facilitate payment, users can either complete payment instantly if they have filed their payment details on Facebook, or manually enter the payment details to effect the transaction. 

No doubt others are wondering why Facebook is testing with Shopify? For one, there is the advantage of having an already set up ecommerce infrastructure provided by Shopify, which means that Facebook will no longer have to build its own. 

Interestingly enough, this is not the first time the company has collaborate with another ecommerce outfit in testing a functionality. As a matter of fact, when Facebook tested its payment detail auto fill functionality, it sought the help of merchants from Ecwid. 

Ecommerce has always been sort of a challenge for Facebook. It tried tackling it with its Gifts store (buy items from Facebook and send them to friends), but the project never really took off. Facebook gets another chance with Buy Buttons, and this time, it is doing it with some help from Shopify. 

But why dabble in ecommerce in the first place? As many may have noticed, Facebook wants to rule the Internet. And we are not talking about social media terms here -- Facebook really does want to be everything in the Internet. It has already lorded over messaging, is fighting with YouTube for video content, and has even made changes to its setup so that users can access news articles, interesting places, businesses, and games without having to leave Facebook. And now it is setting its sights on ecommerce, and boy it is sure bent on making it work.