Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com 3 Best Practices for Facebook eCommerce Success Social Strategies for Online Retailers Rapidly or reluctantly, retailers are adding social channels and tools to their arsenal, urged on by customers and competitors who are already using them. But these are not the only forces driving retailers towards social commerce. No longer hype, the opportunity for word-of-mouth customer referrals driven by social context and a shared shopping experience is simply too large to ignore: 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from online community of friends (Internet Retailer, September 2009)
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Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com
3 Best Practices for Facebook
eCommerce Success
Social Strategies for Online Retailers
Rapidly or reluctantly, retailers are adding social channels and tools
to their arsenal, urged on by customers and competitors who are
already using them.
But these are not the only forces driving retailers towards social
commerce. No longer hype, the opportunity for word-of-mouth
customer referrals driven by social context and a shared shopping
experience is simply too large to ignore:
67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations
from online community of friends (Internet Retailer,
September 2009)
Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com
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53% of people on Twitter recommend companies and/or
products in their Tweets, with 48% of them delivering on
their intention to buy the product. (ROI Research for
Performance, June 2010)
Facebook, blogs, Twitter and customer reviews are
considered the most effective tactics for mobilizing
consumers to talk up products online. (Etailing survey of 117
companies, September 2009)
On Black Friday 2010, there were more than 6x the number
of Facebook status updates related to retail purchases as on
the previous Friday (Facebook, January 2011)
Facebook in particular has become increasingly important to
retailers in the past year. Half of the top 25 retailers have integrated
Facebook into their own sites, as have 17 of the fastest growing 25
retailers, a telling statistic. In 2010 Facebook created a new team to
work with retailers and help them best leverage Facebook Platform
products such as the Like button and login to drive business.
There are a plethora of powerful tools, but three best practices will
help you effectively tap that power while creating a customer
experience that appropriately reflects your brand.
1. Invest equally in integrating Facebook into your own
site as in Facebook.com
2. Incorporate ecommerce and social best practices both
on your site and on Facebook.com
3. Close the loop to enable seamless shopping
”Invest in
Facebook
integration
both on
your site
and off to
tap the
power of
social
while
creating a
customer
experience
that
supports
your
brand”
Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com
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#1 Invest equally in integrating Facebook for your own site as
in Facebook.com
Why is it important to invest equally in your on-Facebook and off-
Facebook social strategy? According to Facebook, a combination of
on-site and off-site Facebook tools and technologies can create a
“social recommendations engine that personalizes sites and powers
word of mouth at scale.” Most retailers are comfortable with
running a variety of promotions on their Facebook Page, but less
comfortable with using Facebook tools on their own sites. The
discrepancy is illustrated below, with 91% of retailers surveyed
using or planning to use a Facebook Page, but significantly fewer
looking at integrating Facebook (formerly “Facebook Connect”) for
their own sites.
An important area of focus for 2011 is on making the rest of the web
as social as Facebook. In a December interview, Ethan Beard,
Director of Facebook Developer Network told Internet Retailer
“We’re not trying to recreate the Internet on Facebook.com. In fact, I
spend most of time working with people to socialize the web
Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com
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outside of our site.” Altimeter analyst Jeremiah Owyang calls 2011
“the year of integrating social with the corporate site.”
Investing equally in social for your own site is the path to creating a
consistent brand experience for your customers wherever they are,
and in getting the most out of your entire social investment.
At the most basic level, integrating Facebook into your own retail
site means you don’t have to “send your customers away” to be
social. You can add social context and create a loop between
Facebook and your site without distracting consumers from the
shopping process. Most retailers have a significant investment in
search marketing programs, and keeping people on the site is a
cardinal rule.
Consider the following examples. In the first, visitors to Macys.com
who want to “like” the Macys brand must click the “Facebook” icon,
which redirects the browser window to the Macys brand Page on
Facebook.com. That shopper then has to click “Like” on the Macys
Facebook Page, then hit the “back” button on the browser or re-
navigate to the Macys.com site to return to their original path. This
process leaves a lot of opportunity to be distracted from the original
destination and intention. In the second example, Gap.com has
implemented the Facebook Like Box plugin. A visitor to Gap.com
simply clicks the “Like” button and the process is completed
without any additional clicks, creating a connection to the Gap
Facebook Page seamlessly, and most importantly keeps the person
on the site. This is a win-win for Gap and its customers, enabling
both to establish a new relationship and a new communication
channel on Facebook, without distracting from the shopping
process.
”2011 is
the year of
integrating
social with
the
corporate
site - don’t
send your
customers
away to be
social”
Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com
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While this is a very simple integration example, it is representative
of why it is important to get the balance of on-site and off-site social
Facebook eCommerce Best Practices www.gigya.com
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right. According to Facebook, people who click the Like button on
external sites have 2.4x the number of friends than the average
Facebook user, and click on 5.3x more external links, so ensuring
you connect with these word-of-mouth advocates is not just a nice
to have, it’s a must-have1.
#2 Design for the best of ecommerce and social both on your
site and off
Tried and true eCommerce best practices still apply when designing
a commerce experience on Facebook.com, just as social best
practices still apply when integrating social features into your
website. JCPenney has a history of running innovative social
campaigns on Facebook, and has proven they are not afraid to
iterate quickly and learn how best to engage customers and
potential customers wherever they are. The company recently
launched their full catalog as a store on Facebook, which is
embedded as an app within the company’s Facebook page.
While JCPenney deserves kudos for many features, there remains a
significant gap between the shopping experience on Facebook and
that on JCPenney.com. Important (and best practice) information
needed for purchase conversion, like size charts, fabric content, and
care instructions is missing, e.g. what age child does that size M
boys swimsuit correspond to? Out of stock notifications don’t come
until after placing an item into your bag. One of the app’s strengths
is the ability for existing JCPenney.com customers to checkout using
their existing JCPenney.com account, an important best practice.
The core shopping user experience and associated best practices
are retailers’ strengths to leverage in a social context.