Facebook’s continuous development of its online shopping platform, Facebook Marketplace, has led to addition of new shipping options! More shipping choices enable users to expand their item pools, facilitating more eCommerce activity for the platform all-in-all.
The new shipping options, now available to UK users, enables sellers to include shipping cost estimates to their listing, potentially expanding their pool of buyers. On the user-experience (UX) side, the update also provides marketplace browsers with an additional filter to sort their searches based on shipping options, making it easier to find relevant products and sellers.
The entire process seems to have been inspired by Ebay, down to the notifications. Which is essentially what Marketplace was originally pictured as – Ebay on Facebook. It’s worth noting that Marketplace has around a billion monthly active Facebook users; nearly 50% of Facebook’s total monthly user-count while at the same time rivaling TikTok’s current total. Marketplace has played such an integral role with regard to Facebook’s broader eCommerce push.
The Vision
Facebook envisions that all posts on both Facebook and Instagram will be shoppable, which can lead to new habitual in-app behaviors. What the company wants to happen is for users to eventually grow accustomed to being able to buy all products in all posts that they come across. This is expected to fuel all-new shopping behaviors, opening doors to even more brands and merchants.
Facebook also attributes Marketplace as being a key marker for potential, given how it was able to discover and highlight new insights through its most popular product categories. In a way, Marketplace has made use of prevalent eCommerce behaviors to identify rising seasonal trends, similar to how Twitter and Snapchat used online shopping behavior to organize their holiday marketing strategies.
In the case of Facebook Marketplace, it shared key insights revealing that amongst its most popular categories are US household items, furniture, kids and womens’ apparel, and (surprisingly) automobiles (cars, trucks, etc.).
Based on September searches, Facebook also notes that:
“Over the summer, we also saw a 60% increase in interest for clothing on Marketplace in the US. Supply also increased during this time, with the number of clothing listings for sale rising by 20%.”
The Wrap
As Facebook Marketplace, and the entirety of eCommerce in general, continues to evolve, Facebook, too, continues to support its growth by constantly introducing new tools and functions that help provide an all-around better online shopping experience. Improvements to the incorporation of ads brands and the continuous addition of new elements stamp Marketplace as truly being one of Facebook’s top performing platforms.
Though Facebook has been wrapped up in all sorts of legal and political heat lately, the future of it’s eCommerce arm still looks bright. Now that it’s on the move to call for higher government regulation; which is sure to back up the platform on certain fronts; and is pushing towards a higher ‘Metaverse’, the coming years that the Facebook Marketplace is expected to see will surely be ones that are full of opportunity and turbulence alike.
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