Facebook Business Pages updated to make them mobile-friendly

New Delhi: Social networking company Facebook Inc. on Tuesday announced major changes and expansions to its Facebook for Business Pages, making it more mobile-friendly. These pages are the hub for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to advertise on Facebook and connect with its 1 billion users.

As per the company’s latest figures, 45 million active businesses advertise on Facebook globally and 1.5 million in India. The volume of Indian businesses on Facebook is growing at 70% year-on-year.

Indian companies that advertise on the social networking platform include Ola cabs, Coca Cola India and Chumbak. Moreover, 56% of the people on Facebook in India are connected to an SMB.

A big part of the revamp involves making Business Pages more mobile-friendly for both businesses and consumers. In its blog post announcing these features, Facebook wrote that the new features for Business Pages reflect “our belief that no matter if you’re a plumbing company, a flower shop, a non-profit or a brand, your Page should house the information people are looking for, help you communicate with your customers, and support your unique goals”.

Here are some new features that are being added.

Prominent call-to-action buttons

The new call-to-action buttons are bigger, brighter and can be found directly under the Page cover photo. The company is in the process of testing several new call-to-action buttons, including ‘Call Now’, ‘Send Message’ and ‘Contact Us’. CNBC reports that this is part of a push to help companies use Facebook’s messenger to engage with customers via its tools. It’s a long-term plan to make money from the 900 million people who use Facebook Messenger every month.

New sections

Adding two new sections ‘Shop’ and ‘Services’ will help businesses customise information most relevant to them. The Shop section will enable retail businesses to display their products, while the Services section will allow services to showcase a list of their offerings at the top of their Page. For example, a spa can add their services menu to its Page or highlight the line of products it sells.

Improved layout

As more people connect with Pages from phones and tablets, Facebook now makes it easier for both businesses and consumers to navigate through Pages on mobile. The Page layout will be designed in such a way that does away with endless scrolling and clicking. When this new layout launches in the coming weeks, Page visitors will be able to click on the tab associated with a section to see more details. The Home tab, which is the landing tab on Pages, will also contain highlights of each section.

Other features

Other features include ‘Saved Replies’ and ‘Response Signals’. Under Saved Replies, a company can create or save responses to common questions, ensuring faster response. Through Response signals, the business would be able to identify pages that are more responsive to private messages.

The new tools and features build on the introduction of new communication features for Business Pages that Facebook has announced in August. These included more ways for customers to send private messages to a business and new tools for Page administrators (business owners) to manage and respond to messages.

Today’s updates could give Business Pages a fillip.