Facebook seems to be rolling with changes now! First they revamped notes. Then they decided to give video freebooters far less rein than they previously had. They added the ‘Donate’ button. And now, Facebook Page is going to get a slightly different look, which might be convenient for pages with a ‘call to action’ button.
Here are the Facebook Page changes that you will see:
- Profile picture is much smaller: We think this is a good change. Profile pictures are important for individuals, not Pages. Pages need to get their message across primarily using the cover photo. The larger profile picture made any message or branding on the cover photo difficult to read in its entirety. Adjust the text and all symmetry was gone. So this one gets a thumbs up from us.
- Call-to-Action button: This gets big and blue, and will be on the cover photo, bottom right or bottom left corner. It seems to be luck of the draw where it will end up. Either way, it will no longer be in a row with the ‘like’ and ‘message’ buttons.
- Like and Message buttons: These leave the cover photo and end up underneath it. This, again, is a good change which will leave the cover photo more prominent.
- Other tabs: ‘About’, ‘Timeline’ and so on will shift a bit to the left, going under the smaller profile photo, instead of being front and centre. Again, more focus on cover photo. Good stuff.
- ‘View as Page Visitor’: Did Facebook really not offer that option before? Now, if you’re admin of a page, you have the option of viewing the page as a visitor. You could always do this with your personal profile, so if Facebook is rolling this out only now, it’s about time!
The thrust of the changes, which are largely cosmetic, seems to be to make the cover photo far more visible. Since cover photos are no longer a background, you can get the most important message from your community or business right there on the cover photo. It will reach people far more easily.
The improved visibility of the ‘call to action’ button, separating it from the other actions you can do like ‘message’ or ‘like’, seems to give it more importance. You’re no longer going to have people accidentally clicking it, though, so we’re not very sure if this will have an impact.
These changes are just being rolled out right now. We created a lovely and absolutely irrelevant page just to play with them, and got the ‘view as page visitor’ part, but we didn’t get the changed layout. Hopefully, it will soon get here, too.
Facebook has really been changing things up. Last week, Facebook-owned company, Instagram, stopped being quite so square. Listening to the multitude of people who wanted to take portraits and landscapes, they now give you the option of shooting in those modes, even though default, of course, is square. We do like that. They’re keeping the identity that made Instagram different as the default, but still giving the option of shooting out of the box. It might make a lot of ‘beat the square’ tools redundant, though.
Read More: Need to separate your Facebook and Instagram lives? You can do that!
Hat-tip to Mari Smith
