09/01/2012

Can Social Shopping Finally Take Off? (adweek.com)

Analog shopping is inherently social. There's the flea market stroll, the girls' outing, and the time-honored encounter with a mall Santa. But e-commerce, a category that's expected to reach $200 billion this year, has yet to reap full benefits of the social networking revolution. The two seem as compatible as reindeer and sleighs, yet the universe is littered with proof of awkward pratfalls. (...) That explains why Facebook killed Beacon, a function that automatically published a user's e-commerce interactions to news feeds. (...) Shopping on Facebook remains a challenge.

F-commerce-online storefronts within the Facebook framework-hasn't quite caught on. Large brands like Pampers and ASOS have opened successful stores on the platform, but integration with existing inventory operations is too costly for the average-sized retailer. What's more, it's not clear how willing shoppers are to open their wallets on a social network. "People don't go to Facebook to shop. They never have," says Harish Abbott, co-founder of Sneakpeeq, a social shopping platform. Using "Facebook norms", like game mechanics, to drive discovery, is more effective, he says.

Rather than drop dollars into F-commerce, retailers are getting more socially creative with their own e-commerce sites. And they should-revenue per click from shoppers arriving via social media links is $5.24, versus the $3.18 per click spent by email shoppers, according to analytics company ClearSaleing. Share and "like" buttons help drive traffic since click-through rates for news feed links are vastly higher than for Facebook ads. The Levis.com "Friends Store," for example, uses Facebook Connect so its shoppers can see comments, shares, and likes from their Facebook friends within the Levi's site. It's social, without that awkward automatic sharing part.
(...)
Bernhard Longin, CEO dot-group, comments: "Facebook is truly a big challenge for marketers to serve as sales channel, but is also very efficient. Firstly, social media sales need a broad fan base to kick-off a sustainable and interactive dialogue with the brand. Then you can take efforts to make fans become happy customers. When you want people to buy on a Facebook platform you should deliver an attractive fan page providing special tabs, advanced apps, competition apps, YouTube integration etc. and, last but not least, regular sales specials which contribute in hard sales. From our experience with famous international brands social media sales work very well when the parameters perfectly fit together and match the communication needs users expect on these channels."

(Source: adweek.com)