Facebook’s New Services Template for Business Pages: What You Need to Know Before the August 22 Rollout

If you’ve been doing social media marketing for a while, it should come as no surprise that Facebook makes a lot of changes to its platform in terms of user experience and formatting. Often these changes will happen automatically, with very little (if any) prior notice.

In some cases, however, Facebook gives advertisers a heads up about changes that it’s planning to implement. So it might be time to check your inbox: have you received an email like the following yet?

Or perhaps you’ve heard the buzz that there’s something new out there on Facebook available for service-based businesses. Either way, business pages will automatically be opted into the new templates on August 22nd, and you may be wondering what this means for your business’s Facebook presence.

Why is Facebook Making this Change?

Since Facebook changed the newsfeed algorithm back in January, organic reach has plummeted for business pages. Subsequently, the platform has been making a number of changes (including removing reviews and implementing “recommendations,” and creating a new authorization process for page admins) in an effort to keep these pages “relevant” for business owners and users.

According to the email that Facebook is sending to business owners: “the new layout is specifically for businesses like yours and will showcase important information about your business — like hours, prices, and your menus — making it easier for people to connect.”

These updated business page layouts presumably will encourage engagement with consumers by emphasizing relevant info for your business’ specific industry. Industry-specific call-to-action buttons also will variably be featured for booking appointments, purchasing tickets, placing food orders, direct-messaging the page, or writing recommendations; all based on the template you select.

None of this is exactly new and it remains to be seen whether this will actually create more engagement, but it’s clear that Facebook is making an effort to customize page experiences more based on differing business needs.

Facebook Business Page Templates

Facebook offers a variety of page templates for business pages. Different templates have different buttons and default tabs, allowing you to customize for your type of business. The current options are standard, business, venues, movies, nonprofit, politicians, restaurants and cafes, shopping, video page, and services.

These templates can be changed at any time you choose. All you have to do is go to your business page’s settings and click “edit page,” choose the “edit template” option, and then select the template you’d prefer to use:

Services Template

Applying the services template to your Facebook business page will prompt the following changes:

The new default order for your page’s tabs will be as follows: home, services, reviews, shop, offers, photos, videos, posts, events, about, community, and info and ads. However, you can still easily change the order of these tabs in your Facebook settings. While this template removes the “groups” tab, it can easily be added back, along with options for “live videos” and “notes” tabs. You can also remove any tabs already included in the template that you don’t want or need.

So Should You Transition to the New Services Template?

For a home services business, using this template definitely makes sense. However, it should be noted that the same results can also be achieved by taking advantage of the custom tab options on Facebook, and if you’ve already been doing this, switching to the new template would change and reorder the tabs you already have in place.

We’ve also noticed that many of our clients in the resorts, travel, power equipment, fitness and food delivery businesses are getting promoted to change to the services template as well. This may or may not be desirable based on how much your business wants to emphasize its services. In most cases, another Facebook template will likely work better for these industries.

The important takeaway here is that it’s important to stay up-to-date on any changes that Facebook is rolling out that could affect the look and feel of your business page. If you’re having problems with managing your social presence, Mediagistic is here to help. Our social media marketing team stays on top of all emerging trends, and they can manage every aspect of your social media marketing presence, from customer service to engagement to paid advertising. Call us today to learn more about what our team can do for you.

Alyssa Costin is a Social Media Specialist on the Mediagistic inbound marketing team. She is a UCF grad with a passion for social media and a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry.

Image via iStock.