Facebook new wave of territory expansion

Foreign media recently wrote the article pointed out that Facebook retail and e-commerce business Franksel has said the company can form no other online retail platform to match the tentacles. The company in this area is different from the number of Amazon, Google and other giants, its focus is to create a new product browsing and discovery experience similar to the shopping mall, and use the grasp of "like", hobbies and other information into the personality Elements. It also hopes to streamline the buying process as much as possible and get credit card information from users will be a crucial step.

The following is the main content of the article:

There's a new online retailer in the tech industry, Facebook.

Last week Mark Zuckerberg and his company began testing the Buy button in their News Feed posts and ads in an attempt to allow users to buy merchandise directly from merchants on the Facebook platform . This button will bring more convenience to people who have been on Facebook for a long time, and at the same time marks a new phase in the company's evolution toward giant money-making machines.

It's no surprise that the social network launched the buy button. Nicolas Franchet has been Facebook's global head of retail and e-commerce for a long time. His job is to think about how to use the site's user stickiness to translate it into a shopping platform.

Facebook Facebook is quietly brewing the next wave of expansion after the ads infiltrate dynamic news to help the company flex its muscles in the mobile age: becoming a distinctive online store. "We can form the tentacle that no other platform can match," said Frank Shepherd at a media roundtable discussion in San Francisco earlier this year.

The change of site coincides with the actions of several other technology giants. Apple, which owns iTunes and the App Store, is also home to an online retailer. Google wants to take a similar leap with Facebook through its Shopping Express Shopping Express service: turning advertising into more direct purchases. As Amazon continues to get involved in other areas of technology, other giants are also trying to invade Amazon's territory.

This evolution is reasonable. From Facebook advertisers' perspective, those ads will become more useful if they can quickly translate clicks into buying behavior. Facebook itself will also be the winner, because it creates channels more easily than other online shopping channels (such as clicking on Amazon, Google, or other retail sites to buy). If the social network can really make a large number of purchases, its advertising prices are bound to rise, and may even rise sharply.

As Franklite explained in the spring of this year, Facebook tested several ways to revamp its advertising products to bring them closer to more direct product listing ads. For example, in one experiment, some users saw advertisements containing "Shop Now" buttons in their dynamic messages; other experiments included the automated populating of online shopping cart delivery and billing information with Facebook stored information. "Everything is being recreated," he said.

Not validated by Google

To point out that, Facebook does not want to clone the Amazon, Google and other platforms shopping experience. If you want to challenge the two giants to be the starting point for online product searches, Facebook's purpose and purpose will require dramatic changes. Flanchetter knows the difference, and he thinks the search will not change the shopping experience on Facebook.

Instead, the company's focus will be on creating a new product browsing and discovery experience that's similar to shopping. "People rarely know anything about the product before they buy it," said Frankchet. He pointed out that your likes, hobbies and friend-driven product discovery services are at least as good as price, featured and feature-driven universal search services.

Given that Facebook can analyze the preferences and social life of as many as 1 billion users, in theory, the shopping experience on this social network should not be personalized in any physical store. Ideally, it would be like shopping with your best friend, but the products you see on the shelves are not static, but continually changing to cater to your taste, presenting the product you are likely to enjoy to you Immediate

Facebook wants to use its position as your online identity card to streamline the buying process as much as possible. There is no worse thing for online retailers than the phenomenon of "carts being discarded" (that is, the user's online shopping cart is full of merchandise and ends up without buying because they did not complete the final step of entering payment information checkout) It's

In a pilot project called "Autosale," Facebook worked with some online retailers, such as men's flash shopping site Jack Threads, to pre-pay customers with payment information to encourage them to finalize the closing process. "Ideally, you do not have to check out," said Frankcet.

Credit card information is the key

However, he acknowledged that automatic payment options only work when Facebook has your credit card information. So far, Facebook has not given users much reason to share this important information. Social gamers may have made in-store purchases on Facebook, and some may have used the Facebook Gifts service to send gift cards to friends. Facebook may also be building a payment service similar to Pebble or Google Wallet. As the Facebook shopping platform becomes more prevalent, users may be willing to provide them with credit card information for easy access to features like Autosale.

However, serious consideration of the credit card number is also included in the user's personal information, Facebook tentacles how to further expand, people may also think twice. Frankcet believes that offline shopping will not disappear in the short term. Retail advertising is mainly want to know the effect of Facebook ads drive consumer spending to the store, the credit card number will be the key.

If the cooperative merchants provide credit card purchase information to Facebook, then the latter can use the credit card number to match the corresponding users. Given that Facebook knows which ads that user has seen, it can use A / B ad testing to determine which ads are more effective and give store visits more traffic.

This kind of intelligence technology will become unprecedentedly valuable. Flanchette said online shopping usually does not start or end with the same piece of equipment. For Facebook, the challenge is to try to appear on as many devices as possible. Facebook is already the ubiquitous existence of social life, it is also not a fantasy to permeate every corner of consumer life in the future.

Translator: Le Bang

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