Dive Brief:

• E-commerce platform Shopify announced on its blog Wednesday that it is beginning a beta test of Facebook’s call-to-action Buy feature for a group of Shopify merchants in the U.S.

• Facebook’s Buy button allows users to buy items that pop into their feed without leaving Facebook.

• After adding the new Facebook sales channel to its Shopify account, a merchant can start posting products with buy buttons, promoting them paid advertising, managing customers and orders that come in from Facebook, and more, according to the post.

Dive Insight:

Social media sites, all anxious to increase ways to monetize their free services, seem to be moving swiftly to install buy buttons. With Facebook’s immense reach and with so many people spending a least a little time there each day, a buy button there makes it very easy for retailers to make a sale. 

In the past though, retailers have been burned when Facebook has changed up its features after initially luring in participants to its ecosystem. And it’s still not clear how many people will really shop this way, on social media in general or on Facebook in particular, in any meaningful way. 

In any case, Shopify aims to find out, telling TechCrunch: “The test will help us understand how the feature can drive sales for a wider variety of merchants.”