Facebook’s redesign for business Pages is now fully installed. From March 10th 2011 all business Pages on FB have a brand new look – as seen on the personal profile Pages from February this year. So what’s changed and how can these new features help you to promote your Magento ecommerce website? Let’s have a look…
Tabs are no more…
The tabs featured at the top of all business Pages have now gone but not forgotten – moving to the left sidebar. It’s a good move as tab space was limited and soon ran out for companies with lots of FB content. Users now navigate between ‘Wall’, ‘Info’ and others using a vertical panel of links to the left. This shift provides a lot more space for ecommerce businesses, allowing versatility to add much more functionality (such as shopping apps and featured product banners) all of which will be visible to the user at all times.
New photo strip…
The most recent photos uploaded are now pleasantly arranged at the top of the Page, horizontally for all to see. As well as being more visually appealing as a header, this new feature also displays the most recent and therefore relevant images, making it a handy way of flagging new product range images or competition banners.
Favourites are the new Likes…
Pages can now Like other Pages. Previously Pages could only attach themselves to other Pages by listing them as Favourite. Now Favourites have been turned into Likes. What this means for ecommerce sites is that much the same functionality is now available as when a personal profile Likes a Page. This means a business Page can now comment on other walls, and that comment will appear as from that Page – allowing for a whole new way for businesses to communication.
Change your Page category…
You can now change the category and sub-categories your Page is listed under in the FB search, to improve search results. Previously, once you selected a category it was yours for life – so this is a welcome flexibility. It allows Page owners to re-categorise existing Pages that are underachieving, or become more experimental when creating new ones.
Notifications for Page activity…
Admins can now be informed of any activity on their Page, such as new wall posts made by fans, via email. This makes for much faster responsiveness on comments and editing/removing unwanted posts. A great new feature to help sites increase their interactivity with their customer base – which in turn is a great way of increasing sales and returning customers.
Enhanced Spam settings…
You can now specify words and terms that you do not wish to appear on your wall. This is very handy for getting rid of problem posters, looking to cause trouble on your wall. Constructive criticism from customers can be a great way of engaging them, to help you gain feedback and to instil confidence. But for those who are offering nothing constructive, or using your wall to gain a little attention for themselves, this is a great way of filtering out the wheat from the chaff by specifying terms that commonly feature in your problem posts.
iFrame support…
FBML (Facebook Markup Language), FB’s own embedded language used to control content on bespoke tabs is now on the way out. Apps already using it will be fine for the moment, but iFrames are the newly supported technology to take centre stage in Page development. iFrames can be used to nest pretty much any website content within the chosen frame in FB. This means much more versatility is now possible with all content, allowing you to create a real home-from-home in your FB arena.
Visit our Magento Marketing page for a whole range of marketing ideas to help improve sales on your Magento ecommerce website.
