A couple of months ago, Facebook internalized social commerce by providing users with the ability to send real gifts (not digital as in the old days) to friends.
Here’s how it works:
Click on the “gifts” icon in a friend’s birthday announcement or visit their timeline and look for it there, and you can send a gift to your friend. He or she will be notified immediately and can choose an address where the gift should be shipped.
Okay, so you knew that. But did you know that Amazon and Cafepress have followed suit? The funny thing is that both rely on Facebook (at least in part) to supply a list of friends.
According to Internet Retailer, Amazon’s new feature, called Friends & Family Gifting, allows users to organize their gift lists, find gift ideas and receive reminders of their friends’ birthdays and special occasions, as well as share gift lists via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or e-mail.
Late last month, online retailer Cafepress launched its own gifting program, Likeable Gifts, that uses the same protocol. Read more
When Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in 1843, he was driven as much by financial desperation as inspiration. Dickens wrote and published the classic tale to pay off crippling debt, says a WIFE.org article. But, thanks to a few ghosts from his past, even Scrooge changed his miserly behavior and experienced the joy of Christmas gift giving.
A new holiday trends shopping report from Yesmail Interactive says that, due to the sluggish economy, many shoppers may act similarly Scrooge-like. According to an eBay/Edgell Network report, retailers are looking at a 5% decline in Thanksgiving sales due to showrooming; the use of stores as showrooms to research, view, touch or try, but then buy elsewhere wherever the best value can be found.
In addition, according to the Yesmail research, there will be a lot of procrastinators (51 percent) making their holiday purchases during November and the first two weeks of December. However, a full 24 percent will wait until December to start their shopping.
The bright side to this Scrooge-like Christmas – 7 out of 10 surveyed consumers plan to spend the same or more than they did in 2011, thus continuing the trend from last year when overall holiday sales increased by 4.1 percent. Read more
Facebook recently announced a limited gift service in September which allows users to send real gifts to friends and family directly from the site.
Users can choose a gift as well as a card to send to friends on Facebook. The gift will post on the friend’s timeline or can be sent privately. Members that are sent gifts can unwrap them virtually before receiving the real gift at their address.
Gifts can be sent from birthday reminders or from a friend’s timeline.
Facebook also gives the option of paying right away or later as well as letting gift receivers exchange for something else.
The social network has since added hundreds of gifts and new retail partners including babyGap, Fab, Brookstone, Dean & Deluca, L’Occitane, Lindt, ProFlowers, Random House, Inc. and NARS Cosmetics.
Users also have the option to gift TV shows and music with subscriptions to Hulu Plus, Rdio and Pandora.
The gift service will continue to roll out to Facebook members globally over the next few weeks.
While Facebook has made several attempts in convincing brands to accept the “F-Commerce,” idea, the newest gift service could actually prove successful for the company.
“The prospect of a full scale rollout of Facebook Gifts could be a real shot in the arm for Facebook and its drive to convince brands to commit to the concept of F-commerce,” said Richard Britton, managing director at Cloudsense.
“Even before its IPO Facebook was working to make the site more palatable for retailers and brands as a potential sales channel. Retailers are keen to use Facebook to tap into its massive market of one billion users to drive sales and develop another revenue stream, they just need convincing. It remains a catch 22 situation: brands need to get involved for the system to take off yet many won’t commit to the platform until they see success stories from other brands. If Facebook can demonstrate that ‘Gifts’ does indeed appeal to consumers, then Facebook, its shareholders, consumers and brands will ultimately win.”
If the social network’s gift platform can win over brands then it could prove to be a lucrative way of bringing in money for the firm while proving to investors it can make money in other ways than only advertising.
“Brands will need to adapt to the innovation by removing silos between business systems to deliver a more granular view of the customer that can be the basis for a long term relationship. Brands are still to be 100 per cent convinced about the overall success of F-commerce, but the introduction of new and usable tools like Facebook Gifts could go a long way to towards tipping the balance.”
This post originally appeared on ‘Computer Business Review‘
A new report from Forrester Research found that less than 1% of transactions for new and repeat customers in a recent study could be traced back to social links. The report, The Purchase Path Of Online Buyers In 2012, examined the data for 77,000 consumer orders made between April 1 and April 14, 2012.
The study’s author, Forrester Research VP and principal analyst Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali, told Internet Retailer, “We’ve known for awhile that Facebook hasn’t been a direct sales channel for most companies and it never will be.”
The Forrester report looked at transactions conducted on large retail sites serviced by GSI Commerce. Meanwhile, online marketplaces also report difficulty driving traffic – never mind sales – from social sites. EcommerceBytes collected data from five online marketplaces that received a total of 100+ million visitors during the past year and found that the top three social networking traffic-drivers – Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter – accounted for just 1.1% of the total 100 million visitors to these marketplaces. Read more
Today, people are hanging out in social networks such as Facebook. The new social media stats for 2012, according to the social strategist Cara Pring on her blog The Social Skinny some of the new social media stats for 2012 sites get 137.6 million unique visitors per month in the USA alone.
Although social networks are booming, they have not yet taken off on the commerce side. Yet on Facebook, there is the clear ability for merchants to set up stores where customers can actually buy from beginning to end. Facebook has recently launched a “want” button, which is similar to the “like” button but a little more commerce driven, which is likely to spur further commerce activity on the site. Already Facebook accounts for 60% of social media driven purchases by Q2 2012.
In 2013 other social networking sites will start providing an ecommerce component and for good reason: 62% of adults worldwide now use social media, and social networking is the most popular online activity. Twenty two percent of users’ time online is spent on channels like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, the newest social network that is already on its way to involving an ecommerce component. Read more
E-commerce is driving sales of luxury items even during a weak economy, a study released by PM Digital, a New York-based digital marketing agency, says.
The study, “Trend Report: Luxury Brands Online,” analyzes the state of luxury e-tail and predicts how emerging digital and social media trends will impact the industry. The report shows that successful luxury marketers are those who know how to translate the exclusive, authentic and indulgent in-store experience to an online environment.
Social networks, like Pinterest and Instagram, have been key to customer engagement, the study shows.
By having an integrated e-commerce strategy with both paid and organic search and a diverse social media presence, companies are better able to compete, Suzy Sandberg, President of PM Digital explained while discussing the study’s findings.
The study also found that consumers search more handbags and shoes via websites and mobile apps than any other type of clothing; findings that could be consistent with a younger demographic who is more likely to buy online.
Results were collected from a study of 46 luxury apparel and accessories brands (excluding jewelry) to serve as a benchmark for the sector. The study considered brand heritage, price point and dominant customer profile in choosing brands. Read more
Being a cynic by nature, I’ve never been fully convinced that any of the “Big Three” social media tools was effective in driving traffic to product sales. Self-anointed social media gurus hold seminars, write books, show up at conferences and blog about the proper methods of “Tweeting,” “Liking,” or “Pinning” your way to online success. And yet all of that hype never seems to fully drown out the hum of online merchants telling us that, despite the hours and hours of time they spend on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest (and any of the other social media tools out there) marketing their sales, the returns are negligible. So what’s the deal?
Read more
In the future, the number of contracts between buyers and sellers concluded on Facebook will increase. In the near future, sales through Facebook are even predicted to surpass those through Amazon.
This is according to Nerushka Deosaran, associate at Norton Rose SA, an international law firm.
Speaking at ITWeb’s Social Media Summit, Deosaran said social media is changing the commercial landscape. She also predicted that social commerce will be the next trend to follow e-commerce.
According to Deosaran, social commerce is the conducting of business over social media networks. This includes using social networks to trade, for advertising and marketing, to offer promotions and competitions, as well as accumulating likes and followers on Facebook and Twitter, respectively. Read more
Facebook is rumored to be testing a Want button that would be similar in look and function to its now ubiquitous Like button. The feature was spotted by developer Tom Waddington, who published the button’s code on his blog.
Such buttons already exist — but they have been developed by third-party brands to serve retailers eager to maximize exposure on Facebook’s Timeline. One example is a buttondeveloped by a company called “Want.” It counts among its users The Sharper Image, Ron Jon, and DNA Footwear.
That is not what this new Want button is — at least as it is portrayed on Waddington’s site. Rather, it seems as though it would be a native Facebook feature, not requiring special opt-in from consumers to install or use.
Certainly a Want button follows the Facebook model of providing short but powerful prompts to users to take personal actions, such as Like or Comment, said Rich Hanley, director ofQuinnipiac University’s graduate journalism program. Read more
Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) has changed its payment system, doing away with its Credits program as well as allowing app developers to offer subscription billing.
Facebook currently sells in-app purchases for Credits — digital tokens that allowed users to buy virtual goods within games or apps. But the company found that Credits didn’t catch on as a Facebook currency, and many developers introduced their own virtual coinage, such as Farm Cash in Zynga’s (Nasdaq: ZNGA) “FarmVille” game. To streamline the monetization process across the platform, Facebook will support local currencies rather than just Credits.
Facebook will also allow developers to charge users for monthly subscriptions. KIXEYE and Zynga are already testing the subscription service. KIXEYE is offering a US$9.95-per-month deal on its “Backyard Monsters” game, with special offers for subscribers. The services will be available to everyone in July. Read more
A couple of months ago, Facebook internalized social commerce by providing users with the ability to send real gifts (not digital as in the old days) to friends.
