Facebook borrows from Yelp with refreshed design of mobile Pages
The social network steals a page from local search apps to make essential business information more accessible to people on their smartphones.
Facebook announced Tuesday that it has spruced up the mobile version of Pages, which serve as the Facebook identities of brands and businesses, to better match the needs of people who access them on smartphones.
Pages accessed via mobile browser or iOS app now feature a fresh design and layout that pushes essential business information such as location to the top of the page and better promotes consumer actions such as "likes," check-ins, and shares.
The social network has simplified and enhanced the mobile Pages experience for administrators, who can now more easily switch between public and admin views. Page owners can now include pinned content, or posts they've selected to be highlighted atop their page, near the top of their mobile Pages as well.
The changes are tailored to the more than 680 million people who access the social network via mobile each month, and they potentially provide this growing group of people with a more compelling reason to visit brand and business pages when on the go. Ultimately, Pages look and act more like local business pages on Yelp or Foursquare, meaning they should help would-be customers locate basic business information before anything else, and then push them to check out special offers.
"Each day, millions of people visit Facebook Pages -- with almost half accessing them from their mobile phones. This is why we developed a new mobile Pages layout tailored to the way people look for information on their mobile devices," Facebook said in a press announcement.
A company representative added that Pages is the first Facebook product the social network has redesigned for mobile first, before desktop.
Facebook said the layout changes, available Tuesday via mobile browser and iOS app, would also soon appear in the company's Android app.