A match made in social heaven!

Are Facebook and Shopify on the way to becoming a better Amazon?

The partnership for onsite shops between Facebook and Shopify is not even one year old, but the progress that has been made is quite impressive. Facebook, with all its apps, is already the point of attention for many people. If one includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or Whatsapp, it is hard to find someone who is not using at least one of those apps. They are the "places'' where we as consumers spend our time. Successful companies are aware of that and meet us exactly at our point of attention.

Combining the Facebook universe, as the point of attention, with the capabilities of Shopify, as the point of sale, creates an unprecedented opportunity: Discovery, interaction and purchase, they are literally creating the "one stop shop". Not just for products people are already aware of, but especially for products people love to discover!
Looking at the current capabilities Shopify shop owners have within the Facebook universe is already quite impressing. Nearly the whole shopping experience of a webshop can be replicated.

​Two major steps are still missing though. The first is the actual check-out within the Facebook universe (unless you are living in the US where Instagram Checkout is already being implemented). As of today you still need to leave the platform and purchase the product within the webshop. This however is about to change, as both companies announced that "Shop pay" will be available to merchants on Facebook & Instagram: "Making Shop Pay available outside of Shopify for the first time means even more shoppers can use the fastest and best checkout on the Internet." Users no longer need to leave the platform to purchase the product. The whole process happens on Facebook/Instagram.

The second step is creating visibility for the shop & its products as every shop is just as good as the amount of people visiting it. At the moment advertisers can use an array of formats dedicated to driving traffic/conversions on a webshop page /app outside the universe. However looking at the current metric structure it is already possible to distinguish between conversions happening on a website, app as well as on-facebook, leaving an open door for the potentially soon to come capability to drive paid visibility for shops/product on Facebook or Instagram. It took both parties not even a year to come this far and it won't take them that much longer to launch advertising capabilities as most of the technical infrastructure is already in place.

​So implementing those two missing features will be game changing as advertisers, especially SMBs, will be asking themselves: Do I need to pay the fees on Amazon or is it more lucrative to focus on Social?

Stay cmmrcl.ly impactful!