Facebook this week expanded its shopping capabilities, making it easier for businesses to sell items directly from Facebook and Instagram.

Both social media apps already had some e-commerce capabilities – Facebook with its Marketplace and Instagram with its Checkout feature. However, the launch of Facebook Shops, as it’s being called, expands in-app shopping opportunities significantly.

In a livestream on Tuesday, May 19, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the initiative is, in part, a way to help small businesses cope with the economic devastation caused by lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re seeing a lot of small businesses that never had online presences get online for the first time, and we’re seeing small businesses that had online presences now make them their primary way of doing business,” Zuckerberg said in the livestream announcement. “For lots of small businesses during this period, this is the difference between staying afloat and going under.”

Facebook Shops are free for businesses to create, and once they are set up, they’ll appear on a business’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Eventually, the shops will also be incorporated into Messenger and WhatsApp, according to Zuckerberg. To set up the shops, businesses upload their catalog, choose products to feature, then customize with a cover image and accent colors.

Though the shops themselves are free, Facebook will charge small fees on each purchase made through them, a Facebook vice president told TechCrunch. Facebook believes the real monetization of Facebook Shops, however, will come from advertising.

Facebook also announced that it’s partnering with companies, including Shopify and WooCommerce, to give small businesses the ability to integrate more e-commerce tools into the app and “help them manage their customer journey end-to-end.”

To help shoppers discover the items small businesses are selling, Facebook said it’s building a number of features, like a dedicated shopping tab on Instagram. A Live shopping feature is also on the docket for both Facebook and Instagram.

The social media juggernaut is also working on incorporating augmented reality to its shopping features. “In the near future, Shops will use our AI and augmented reality tech to create better shopping experiences,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his Facebook page. “We’ll automatically identify and tag products in feeds so people can easily click-through to purchase when they find things they like. Small businesses will also be able to personalize their storefronts to first show products that are most relevant to you and use augmented reality to let you virtually try on things like sunglasses, lipstick or makeup to see how they might look on you before buying, or what furniture might look like in your room.”

With more people spending time on social networks, particularly on mobile devices, integrated e-commerce solutions have become more prevalent. It’s a trend many in the promotional products industry have kept an eye on. “Social is the most logical and natural place to be able to shop and transact,” JP Hunt, partner and co-founder at InkSoft, a platform for online branded merch, told Counselor earlier this year. “The reality is a brand or personality spends a lot of effort in developing their social media reach. If they want to stay in front of these customers and keep their attention, the best way to do that is through branded products. There’s a total synergy there.”