Merchants Continue to Expand Ecommerce Sales Efforts To Facebook

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June 17, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Over the past few years, Facebook has become a household name. With over 400 million users, Facebook has more members than the population of the United States, which rests in the low 300 million range. 50% of Facebook users log into their account on a daily basis, spending over 500 billion minutes per month on the social networking site. On top of this, Facebook has more than 70 translations available, is accessed by 100 million mobile phones at any given time, and the average user has 130 friends that they can reach with a simple status update. Clearly, Facebook is a venue equal to search engines when it comes to getting found online, which is why more and more merchants continue to expand their sales efforts to Facebook.

Selling on Facebook is still very new, and with everything young and unproven, the results vary. Still, merchants cannot doubt the reach that this social network provides, which is why many continue to ponder the question “How do I sell on Facebook?” The answer, starts with the fan page. Facebook fan pages can act as an extension to an ecommerce site, or as a separate site all together. There are many ways to customize a Facebook fanpage to make it unique and build a brand. Merchants wanting to reach many consumers at once can send out messages to their fans (now called “likes”) through their fanpage, post updates to their fanpage wall, and provide customized tabs on their fanpage that provide a unique experience. Through custom tabs, more brands are adding their own storefront directly into their fanpage.

Brands like Victoria’s Secret, with 2.5 million fans, simply provide links directly to their store, through their “The Scoop” tab, which details the latest deals in couture. 1800flowers offers a similar experience, but also allows users to send virtual flowers to friends for free. This provides a sales experience unique to Facebook that keeps the brand at the forefront of people’s minds. On top of this, 1800flowers sells a portion of their bouquets directly through Facebook.

While many large brands provide this type of user experience, its the small to mid-sized merchants that are beginning to crack the nut of selling on Facebook. Scott Burnett, owner of Guitar Syndicate, just recently started selling products directly through Facebook, using the CoreCommerce Facebook application called Social Commerce. This application links the Guitar Syndicate ecommerce store (powered by CoreCommerce) and the Facebook fanpage store, so that Burnett can sell directly on Facebook, and keep track of all sales through his normal ecommerce platform. While there are many applications available to sell on Facebook, very few interact directly with a merchant’s online store and ecommerce platform in the way that Social Commerce does. Currently, the Social Commerce app through CoreCommerce is one of the leading methods for selling direct through Facebook. BigCommerce’s SocialShop is another application providing this duel functionality and is currently gaining popularity as well.

It is still uncertain which method will win out: selling directly on Facebook or providing a custom landing page that links consumers directly to a brand’s online store. Still, with 88% of respondents in a recent Omniture survey stating that Facebook is their most important social media channel, it is certain that merchants will continue to experiment with selling on this powerful social platform. The big question still looming is simple: Will you be a pioneer in this space, or wait until it’s too late?