Recreating Customer Experience this Holiday Season with Facebook Shops

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Everything around the holiday season is bright and dreamy. It is the time where either you are surrounded by your family, friends, and loved ones; or are finding the best gifts to send them and put smiles on their faces. Meanwhile, businesses around the world tend to prepare for a successful holiday strategy to drive huge sales through the early fall to the year-end.

The Facebook holiday season 2020 is going to look different for shoppers as well as brands. The aftermath of COVID19 has resulted in a favorable shift for e-retailers in terms of growth in online shopping and change in buying habits among consumers. Facebook has always been the driver of enormous conversions for brands through ads and promotions. However, the launch of Facebook Shops has inspired businesses to seamlessly build their shops, strengthen their digital presence, and power friction-free purchases to shoppers.

What 2020 Facebook Online Shopping Festival Package Holds for You

Around 60% of festive season shoppers in the US explore new products more during the festive season than the rest of the year. As the holiday season sets out, shoppers grow more intense, Facebook online shopping festival accelerates, and brands tap into consumers’ baskets and interests to allure them.

Be it Thanksgiving, Black Friday – Cyber Monday or Christmas, or the year-end season sale; 56% of festive season shoppers agreed that the festive season is a time to find the best deals. The holiday season insights 2020 unlocks humongous benefits to buyers: to harness great deals and for merchants: to delight buyers and offer a frictionless shopping experience.

With continuously evolving shopping behavior; there will be a projected boom in self-care and home improvement products across the globe. Around 60% of consumers plan to shop less in-store due to fear of COVID-19 exposure; thus the demand for products like luxury soaps, nails, and hair care essentials, work from home setup, kitchen, and gardening accessories have been on a significant rise.

On average 85% of people globally are shopping online. Meanwhile, businesses are adapting to the new normal by making their shift online; identifying ways to tap into a wider audience base to make the most out of approaching holiday season sales.

Helping Small Businesses Grow Through – Facebook Shops

Facebook has been finding ways for helping both individuals and businesses to navigate these extraordinary times with new tools and resources. Online Shops on Facebook make shopping seamless and empower anyone from a small business owner to a global brand to connect with wider customers.

Facebook Shops make it easy for businesses to set up a single online storefront for customers to access on both Facebook and Instagram. The idea behind Facebook Shops is to streamline the customer’s shopping journey and allow them to browse collections, save products, and place an order — either on the business’ website or without leaving the app with checkout for Facebook business in the US.

Features of Facebook Shops

Facebook shops offer small and medium businesses an opportunity to move online and create, customize, and grow their business easily. Whether you are a budding business or are a well-established brand; getting ahead with Facebook Shops helps you adapt to the virtual shopping experience and increase your brand awareness.

Here are a series of features that you can leverage while extending your business to Facebook Shops:

• New design layouts for businesses to feature a single product or group of products.
• Real-time preview of product collections.
• Insights option to track and measure performance through Commerce Manager.
• Messaging through Shops via messenger to offer a uniform customer experience or shopping support.
• Live Shopping that enables businesses to create live experiences to feature products and sell directly from those videos.

“To support SMBs during these challenging times, Facebook has also waived off all the selling fees till 30th June 2022.”

What more you can do?

• Sign up for Facebook Shops and bring in your products among highly convertible social connections.
• Connect your existing eCommerce stores seamlessly to Facebook Shops through ecosystem Partners
• Showcase your products on Commerce surfaces with the connectors or apps from the listing partners.

Kick-Off Your Holiday Sale on Mobile

Through the pandemic effect, there has been a significant change in how people live, shop, and communicate. This shift has created a new fondness for mobile devices among the older generations. Around 72% of Gen X and 50% of Boomers are spending more time on mobile during the COVID-19 outbreak; while 44% and 30% respectively are spending more time shopping online.

As people are spending most of their time on mobile devices, make sure that you surface your products on Facebook Shops where people are already shopping. With Shops, you can choose which items you want to feature, merchandise with product collections, and tell your brand story with customizable fonts and styles.

While 82% of global mobile shoppers experience some problems while shopping, Facebook Shops reduces the friction in the path of purchase by enabling buyers to checkout on the brand’s website or within the app for Facebook business in US.

What more you can do?

• Create short posts, stories, FAQs, and how-to guides to help people familiarise the shopping sale and journey.
• Organize short sessions, launches, quizzes, and Vlogs to help people with gifting ideas, DIY skills, and advice.

Scale a Customized Shopping Experience

The year-end shopping season is a time when everyone is looking for products and gifts as per their interest and ends up making heavy purchases. Over 36% of festive season shoppers surveyed globally use Facebook to get inspiration for shopping and gifting.

Here the concept of relevance comes in; Facebook shops are powered to showcase the rich and highly relevant products to each connection. It aims at delivering a customized shopping experience to each user, making it easier for people to discover and shop for things they love right at the moment of discovery.

Moreover, As Shops create a unified business presence across the Facebook family of apps; you’ll also be able to connect with customers and answer their questions through WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram Direct.

What more you can do?

• Connect with the buyers with an after-sale message on the messenger apps; to know more about what they are searching for?
• Create intuitive combinations of alike products to deliver the cross-selling recommendations just after shoppers make purchases.

Seize the Mega Sale Event 

In the west, the holiday season usually starts with Halloween followed by Thanksgiving and BFCM. However, as technology brings the whole world together, shoppers remain more than excited for the mega sale event i.e., Asia-born festivals like Singles day, Doubles day, Hanukkah, and others.

Alibaba reported Singles Day sales of $38.4 billion in 2019; 2.5 times the U.S. sales of last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Shoppers usually get an increased appetite for deals and promotions which signifies the global participation in these events.

As per 2019, 54% of global year-end shoppers purchased something during a Mega Sale event. Offering your products on Facebook Shops helps you leverage the extended products reach among the highly varied, and wider audience base who are just one step from conversion. With shoppers actively supporting local communities and smaller businesses; Facebook Shops facilitate retailers and brands the suite of creative tools and features to enhance and allure global shoppers into the basket.

What more you can do?

• Harness the power of Live and stories on Facebook, host events, product launches, and product demos for popular products.
• Engage connections through doorbusters, countdowns sale, and giveaways to have a real-time interaction with buyers.

‘Tis the time of Discovery Shopping; Holiday Season with Facebook

Gone are the days when people used to look for the products; it is the time where shoppers are constantly exposed to all the products and services that are tracked down from their shared data, social interactions, and web searches.

The long-drawn vision of Facebook Shops is to ignite Discovery Commerce; where products find people and not the other way round. About 84% of people tried at least one new product or service for the first time during the recent pandemic months; which opens up the opportunity for you to expand cross-borders; and grow your connections in other countries in the approaching holiday season.

74% of people globally want to see brand activity on Facebook and Instagram during year-end. With diminishing border lines, people want to understand your business, what you stand for, and be proud to support you. Facebook shops empower you to tell your story to the world; prepare you to shop as per your choice, and gives you a place to showcase what all you have got among the connections already made.

What more you can do?

• Spark new connections through integrated messaging apps like Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram Direct globally.
• Use festive-specific hashtags, location, and tags in your posts; to introduce them to you as creator and persuade shoppers to enable notifications for frequent updates.

Cut Through the Clutter and Go Seamless

The holiday season is a terrific opportunity to connect with shoppers and ensure that your products are heart-marked in their wish lists. Shoppers no longer stick to one merchant or platform when there is a pool of a lot. Be consistent, build trust, and deliver the best – this will surely differentiate you from your competition.

Actionable Facebook Holiday Season Insights 2020: 

• Make sure you prepare your inventory ahead of the festive season to avoid last-minute stock-outs.
• Be prepared with your promotional plans; go for a mix of tools like offers, discounts, price slash, book now pay later, book and collect at the store, and last-minute flash deals.
• Give your store or shop a customized festive look with each coming festival.
• Research and devise a plan for your shop, products, shipping and return mechanism, and so on.
• If you are newly onboarding; research on the top trends, best-selling products, target audience, and group, and so on to start where you can gain more.
• Do not forget to undertake a competitive and SWOT analysis of your competing business to know about your possible competitors.

You can now leverage checkout on Facebook and Instagram Shops (if present in the US); seamlessly integrate your online storefront to Facebook surfaces, manage your eCommerce business from a single panel and expand your business to a global reach. For more on how to harness this opportunity. connect here.