Facebook delivers a better UX for businesses

Every business today seems to have its own Facebook business page, and with good reason; Facebook is a huge force in marketing as the world’s second-most visited website, and no business wants to miss out on potential leads it can pick up from having a Facebook presence.

In the last few days, the company has been finalizing the rollout of its new business page that are characterized by a cleaner look and feel. One of the most prominent changes that users will notice is that the tabs are gone and have been replaced by a left-hand side navigation. Also, the call to action buttons on the page—CTAs like “shop now,” “learn more” and “sign up”—are all more prominent than they ever were.

Facebook began experimenting with these new designs a couple of months ago, but they’re only now being rolled out on a wider basis. The past couple of months has seen a few, different iterations of business pages. For example, at first, business pages sported a bigger Cover photo and removed any display ads that usually showed up on the right-hand side of desktop pages.

The user experience drastically changes thanks to this redesign. The profile picture will not block a page’s cover photo anymore since the latter has been moved to the right. The cover photo after the redesign still retains the same dimensions: 828 X 315 pixels.

The striking, blue call to action button is now at the top right of the page, just beneath the cover photo. Businesses also enjoy more customization, as this call to action button can be configured to show exactly the kind of action the businesses want their customers to take. For instance, shopping at their retail site, watching a video, learning more about their product or service, or booking an appointment.

The theme of this redesign is a cleaner and more minimalist look. The removal of the right-side display ads greatly help with this appearance, as Facebook is attempting to make desktop business pages more consistent with the recent mobile updates for its Facebook pages from earlier this year.

As far as usability goes, the biggest improvement comes from the removal of the page tabs. Without the tabs, a business page now feels like a traditional site, with navigation down the left-hand side of the page. As a result, users should feel like they can navigate the entire page more efficiently as they browse from one section—such as About, Likes, Events and Events—to the next.

In the last several weeks, more and more users have already begun remarking on these changes. Most users should now be able to see the improvements to the redesigned business pages—Last week, a Facebook spokesperson asserted that this redesign rollout is almost finished. On August 3rd, the rollout was expanded; by this week, you should be able to see exactly what the new business page looks like.

[Source: Webdesignerdepot]