The US-based social media giant, Facebook is rolling out new products and features for businesses to find and chat with potential customers on its apps, as the social media company seeks to become an online shopping destination.
The new features and products will help Facebook, already a leader in digital advertising, offer personalized shopping experiences to its users, said Mr. Karandeep Anand, vice president of business products at Facebook.
As part of these efforts, Facebook will tie WhatsApp to Instagram. Businesses will now be able to add a button on their Instagram profiles to let people send a WhatsApp message to the company with one click. The social media company explains that many businesses market themselves or run shops across Instagram, but rely on WhatsApp to communicate with customers and answer questions.
Integrating WhatsApp is particularly important for customers in countries such as India and Brazil, where the Facebook-owned messaging app is widely used, Mr. Anand said.
The social media giant said that it will also begin testing the ability for brands to send emails through Facebook Business Suite, a feature that lets businesses manage their presence across the social media site’s apps, in order to simplify how companies reach customers. It will test new work accounts to let employees manage business pages without needing to log in with their personal accounts.
The new business tools come a day after WhatsApp began testing a new feature in Brazil to let users find shops and services through a directory in the app for the first time, part of an effort to bolster eCommerce on the service.
Other changes Facebook aims to make in the platform includes incorporating more content from creators and local businesses and new features that let users control the content they see, but these changes were not detailed at this time.
