Facebook live shopping
The live shopping feature on Facebook allowed businesses to host live-streamed shopping events in which they could showcase, promote, and sell their products in a real-world setting. True to the nature of live streaming, real-time interaction with the viewers was key to selling products on this channel and keeping the audience engaged.
Facebook’s own Checkout feature meant that users could purchase products directly on-stream without the need to leave the event.
Facebook was phased out the Live Shopping feature on October 1, 2022 in order to focus on short-form videos for commerce, i.e. Facebook and Instagram Reels. Users can still live stream via Facebook, but will no longer have the option to feature and sell products on-stream.
How did live shopping on Facebook work?
Once you had set up your Facebook Shop, you could start Facebook Live Shopping on the Commerce Manager:
- Navigate to the Commerce Manager on the desktop and click on your shop logo.
- Under “Promotions” you could find Live Shopping.
- You then created your “Product Playlist” which contained all the products you wanted to promote and sell at your live shopping event.
- You arranged the items in the Product Playlist according to the order in which you wanted to show them on stream.
- In the “Product Playlist Details” section you named your playlist and set a standard link to your Facebook shop or external website.
- Once your Product Playlist was created, you had the option to go live immediately or save it for a later time. You also had the option to switch to the mobile app if you wanted to stream from a mobile device.
When it was time to stream, either the mobile or desktop app allowed you to go live with your video feed. Facebook put your products according to your playlist in a “featured products” section on-screen. Then it was up to you to promote and actively sell your product to your audience and incentivize them to complete a purchase in-app or on your website. You had full control over the timing when you featured your products with simple button clicks.
You could link to the video in your timeline once the event had been concluded. Many users didn’t watch streams live, but watched a rerun at a later time.
Is Live Shopping a good commerce opportunity?
Using the Live Shopping feature enhanced a seller’s product-to-consumer (P2C) strategy for the social commerce platform in a significant way because their engagement level with the audience was very high. You were able to accumulate real-time feedback from audiences and immediately see which products worked and which didn’t. Live Shopping was incredibly helpful in gauging your audience’s behavior and informing your P2C strategy in an impactful way.