Facebook 'Shops' is an ecommerce hub that's being rolled out to their iOS and Android apps

Facebook starts rolling out a ‘Shops’ section as part of the Facebook app for Android and iOS platforms. This is a part of the larger push by the company to leverage the platform as an e-commerce hub. Facebook has started rolling two new sections for businesses, focusing both on products as well as services.

Businesses can use the product section to exhibit their products along with all relevant details. Users can browse through the products catalogue to check all that is being offered by the business and use Facebook Messenger to send a message expressing interest in the product to the Facebook page. Businesses can also post details about the services that they offer in the services section.

The Facebook ‘Shops’ feature is rolling out to all pages in Southeast Asia along with other high growth, emerging markets. However, the ‘Services’ section is gradually rolling out to all the pages in a staged rollout as part of the wider worldwide launch. “The shops and services sections are a continuation of our efforts to make Facebook Pages the most valuable online presence for the more than 60 million businesses around the world that use Pages each month.” added Ryan Ebanks, Product Marketing Manager at Facebook on the rollout of the feature.

The new sections make sense for Facebook to make Facebook Pages into the centre of online presence for Businesses. The move also puts more emphasis on the Facebook Messenger platform along with the bot platform to deliver products and services. About 57% of Facebook users in India are connected to at least one small business on the platform and about 1.99 billion interactions are generated between users and businesses in India. The new sections aim at bringing, even more businesses to the platform while pushing the interactions to a whole new level.