What Happened
Shopify is expanding its partnership with Facebook to make it easier for brands and merchants to start selling directly on Facebook Messenger. A new “Shop Now” button will appear when a user starts chatting with any Facebook Business Page store if that Page uses Shopify’s Messenger sales channel. Tapping the button opens an in-chat portal that showcases the merchant’s product catalog. Users can complete purchases via Shopify’s checkout portal without leaving Messenger.
What Brands Should Do
Earlier this year, Shopify released an iOS keyboard app that enables merchants to sell via various messaging and social apps. As it continues to explore the ecommerce potential in conversational contexts to cater to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction, brands and retailers need to take note and start experimenting with conversational commerce.
To learn more about how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, check out the Conversational Interfaces section of our Outlook 2016.
Source: TechCrunch
Header image courtesy of Shopify’s promotional video