On Monday, Facebook Messenger has made it easier for companies to sell products through their Messenger bots by adding a buy button, which gives users the ability to buy products from a bot without needing to leave Messenger. This is a way for brands to direct people from their Facebook ads to there Messenger bots.
Originally, if you wanted to buy something, you had to click a button that took you out of Messenger to a web page. From there, you had to type in our credit card and shipping information. This could be troublesome, especially if you had already taken the time to attach the same information to your Facebook Messenger profile in order to send and receive money from friends.
With this new update to their Messenger bots, people will have the option to automatically plug in the credit card and address information attached to their Messenger profiles when buying something from a Messenger bot without having to leave Facebook’s app. Companies are going to have to utilize either Stripe or PayPal in order to process these payments, according to Facebook Messenger’s developer documentation.
With this new form of Messenger bot, it’ll make it easier for users to buy from them, but it’ll give bots the tools to increase sales through messenger.
Brands will be able to add links to their Facebook ads that directs users to their Messenger bots. This option can be used by advertisers to promote a Messenger-only sale and show the discount code in the Facebook ad, as well as on the welcome screen, when a users clicks to open a conversation thread with the bot.
Brands will even be able to improve how their products are displayed in Messenger, as they can show image thumbnails using the swipeable gallery-style card format in Messenger. A custom web page can be loaded that takes up the entire screen of the device.
Brands will have the ability to personalize these in-app webpages as well. These pages are called “webviews” by Facebook, and they’ll send them to a person’s user ID when they open these pages. This is how a person can buy something from a Messenger bot and not leave the app. This lets brands remember the products or product categories somebody has previously checkout through Messenger bot interactions.
A couple other features that come along with the new Messenger bots includes:
- Button-only, keyboard-hiding prompts that makes it easier for people to send a bot their location, pick a color for an item or choose a specific product from a row of images.
- The ability for people to share individual messages, or “message bubbles,” with friends on Messenger. A bot can show a shirt to you and if it’s something a friend will lobe, you can send it to them through Messenger, which is then displayed to them the same way it was to you.