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In new e-commerce era, shops combine discovery and purchase in an instant

Welcome to Part 3 of our Facebook Insight Series from leading Sydney-based Digital Marketing Agency Remap Online. 

This four-part series brings you key insights from deep inside Facebook’s HQ in Silicon Valley to help your Aussie internet business thrive post-pandemic.

If you missed Part 2, you can catch up on it here. We explored why mobile creative is so important. 

This week, Insight #3 will show you how shops are entering a new era for e-commerce. 

Consumers the world over have evolved from bricks and mortar to now include online shopping. But mobile has brought together the two most essential elements that underpin any transaction: Discovery and purchase.

Window shopping has always been an essential part of consumer behaviour, and it still is. The ability to browse, imagine, try on, and discuss an item’s potential with your friends is an essential precursor to a sale. 

So what’s changed? 

• Mobile’s ability to be with us 24/7 and 365 has brought the shop to the people.
• Consumers no longer ‘go shopping’. Instead, they’re always shopping. 
• Platforms and their algorithms mean people no longer search for products. 
• Products now search for people. 

No other platform does e-commerce better than Facebook and Instagram. Kate Box, Facebook’s Head of Retail for ANZ said recently that “Facebook and Instagram are set to become the new Westfield”. 

Kate’s talking about how Facebook and Instagram Shops let you bring the checkout right into the moment of discovery. Product Tags mean businesses can tag the products they feature in their posts to showcase prices and provide a direct path to purchase for consumers to shop right in the moment of discovery.

Mark Zuckerberg himself was quoted on a Facebook Conference call in July last year saying shops will provide “natural value for businesses” by helping them to better “connect [their advertising] with their shops”. They were taking audiences from the top of the funnel in discovery mode, right down to driving actual sales. The best part was the statement he put right at the end of his remarks. As far as Zuckerberg is concerned, Shops are “going to continue scaling.”

Comments like this shouldn’t go unnoticed by any Australian internet retailing business. 

Shops now provide a single storefront for your business across all of Facebook’s apps and sites (Facebook, Instagram, What’s App, and Messenger) – helping you bring the shop to the people.

Whether you’re looking to reach more people, drive consideration and purchase, or deepen customer relationships, the entire ecosystem of Facebook, Instagram, What’s App and Messenger provides a personalised place for anyone to start their shopping journey. 

You can also use product tags in ads to help people discover your products at scale. Putting some media spend behind your catalogue along with the power of Facebook’s data and targeting capabilities means you can now match individual items to individual people. (i.e. Dynamic Product Ads).

Combining with Influencers means retailers can quickly build authenticity and promote their products to otherwise hard-to-reach audiences. Influencers will get your products in front of the people who follow them in new, socially interactive experiences. 

Facilitating this on mobile has become the digital version of window shopping with your friends. 

Discovering new products, learning more about them, discussing them with your friends, seeing their prices, and (importantly) seeing a direct path to purchase with the desire to buy it. Right there. Right then. 

Mobile lets you make the transaction in the very same moment that you make the discovery, gather social proof and build the desire to purchase. 

Mobile has brought the mall to the people, and those people can now go window shopping, along with their friends, while they’re on the bus to work, during the ad break of their favourite show on TV, or laying in bed at midnight. Wherever, whenever, 24/7, and 365. 

Consumers are always shopping, so isn’t it time you brought the shop the people?

Find out how you can Get Started with Facebook and Instagram Shops here.

The insights in this article were supplied by Stu Stevens, Managing Director of Sydney based Digital Marketing Agency – Remap Online – an Official Facebook Marketing Partner.