Facebook wooing SMBs with new shop and services sections

Social media giant Facebook is continuing its efforts to get inside small businesses with the roll out of two new sections on its Pages feature.

The new sections, Services and Shop, were created to "help businesses drive the actions that matter to them", the company says in a statement.

The new shop section is available to all Pages in Southeast Asia and other high growth and emerging markets, including New Zealand.

Globally, more than one billion people on Facebook are connected to at least one business. And in New Zealand more than 80% of people on Facebook are connected to a business.

The shop section provides businesses with a new way to prominently display the products they are selling on their Page and allows people to discover, browse and make offers to purchase products through messaging.

The services section on Pages is available globally to professional services pages (and to all Pages in the coming weeks), and allows service businesses such as plumbers and spas to showcase a list of their offerings on their Page.

"Our focus right now is overwhelmingly on the consumer experience," Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook said during Q2 2016 Earnings interviews regarding Messenger.

"We're really looking at the organic activity that's happening between businesses and consumers," she adds, noting that 1 billion messages of that nature are being sent per month on Messenger.