New research from Mintel and publicized by eMarketer further reinforces the importance of friends and family members in buying process. This is exactly the type of authentic peer-to-peer feedback, both asynchronous sharing through Facebook and real time collaborative shopping, we enable with Fluid Social.
A nice piece by Jennifer Saranow Schultz ran in the Wall Street Journal this morning describing how retailers are increasingly leveraging a shoppers’ social network to move people through the conversion funnel. In it Jennifer does a great job of capturing the key aspects of the Fluid Social product.
The data we’ve been collecting from our customer installations is proving that comments from friends are the most effective way to drive immediate increases in engagement and conversion. It is good to see this topic getting attention from the mainstream business press.
Fluid Social takes a fresh look at defining what social shopping is. It is the first product to focus on getting consumers the opinions that matter most – those of their friends and family – at the point they matter most – on your ecommerce site. The product’s genesis is from insights gained through years spent designing leading-edge ecommerce experiences on behalf of our clients. It has been in development for years.
We’ve written a whitepaper to articulate why this is such an important topic and how retailers can leverage existing friendships and social networks to improve the shopping experience, increase engagement and sell more. If you’d like to read the whitepaper please visit the Fluid website. If you need to read more about Fluid Social we can help you with that, too.
In this article from early 2008 Nick O’Neill predicts the existing social networks like Facebook with much larger audiences will overtake the shopping-focused sites like Kaboodle, Stylehive and This Next. We couldn’t agree more – we think the opinions of your existing friends will be more important to driving transactions than those of online “shopping friends.”
Customer and shopper response to date have told us that Nick was right. People are thrilled to finally have a way to get the opinions of their “real” friends directly embedded in the shopping experience. Want to see how? Checkout the latest on JanSport.com.
Some of you may have seen the recent articles published about the latest release of Fluid Social on AdAge and Techcrunch. We’re flattered by the coverage but even more excited by the response we are getting from customers and prospective customers.
We’re excited to point you to a new and improved version of our Friend-Based Merchandising on the JanSport site. The new release not only allows shoppers to see their Facebook friends’ comments on products on the shopping site but it also allows users to start their product exploration from within the JanSport site by clicking on the “My Friends Like” tab. It also pulls comments from friends to feature them more prominently on the site. It also posts to your news feed when you comment on a product or ask a question and features a Facebook application that allows you to zoom in and see a product in multiple colors.
We’re excited about the new release but can’t wait to hear your thoughts. Let us know what you think.
At Fluid we’ve delivered some interesting work in the past: Timberland’s Build Your Own Boot Studio (BYOB) was a breakthrough in product configuration, offering instant color change and the first rotation of a custom product. Reebok built upon this by allowing two axes of rotation as well as allowing shoppers to configure a product on a lifestyle photograph. The recent launch of the new Vans configurator, is one of the most exciting client launches during my time at Fluid.
The Vans work builds on many of our learnings of the past years:
We couldn’t be more excited to share this client work with you…keep your eyes peeled for future deployments of Fluid Social collaborative shopping deployed in support of collaborative shopping for traditional, mainline products.
When we discuss Fluid Social, particularly for Facebook, we often get the question of whether a particular brand’s shoppers are actually on Facebook. That question is getting easier and easier to answer as there is overwhelming evidence that soon EVERYONE will be using Facebook regularly. A latest bit of research just showed up on CNN.com.
Social Design Principle #4 – Participate in Active Listening
Utilizing social design principles to improve a customers shopping experience has the potential to bring tremendous benefit to a company and its customers. However, no matter what conversations take place, there are two key components essential to the fourth principle: active listening:
Maintain your commitment to having conversations.
Social Design is only powerful when the content is new. Customers will not participate in a conversation if there are very few others or if the thread is old. If there is little or no activity, then people are not likely to participate. Therefore, companies must be prepared to maintain their blogs, video and photo galleries, Twitter broadcasts, Facebook groups, and whatever myriad of social technologies they choose to pursue.
More importantly, companies need to mean every word they say. If a company promises to modify a product or improve a service in response to an upset customer, they must do so. Engaging customers then failing to follow through and deliver on those promises damages the company’s brand, reputation, and credibility.
Social Design Principle #3 – Appeal to the Unique Individual
Social Design can recommend products in a smarter, more relevant way that appeals to your customers’ unique individuality. It is more powerful to present a customized list of items “We think YOU will like…” rather than simply presenting “Related Items.”
Previously we discussed the value of customer reviews as a source of unbiased product information, but in some cases they may be puzzling or less useful to customers. Reviews may have less value when shopping for certain types of products. Books, movies, clothes, and shoes are often reviewed based solely on personal preference. While one person may love a movie, another may hate it. With this in mind, how do customers find or know what is relevant to them? Making better connections between customers and products requires a better recommendation system to identify items that will appeal to the unique individual:
Social Design Principle 2: Encourage Authentic Conversations
Previously we identified how important it is to deliver unbiased information to consumers and cited the Amazon Effect as evidence. Authentic conversations promote products, get valuable customer feedback, and establish a presence and a voice for your brand. There are many methods, but the two most common are:
Start a Blog
How can a company initiate authentic conversations? First, start and maintain a blog. It’s easy, it’s cheap, and it’s familiar to customers as a way to interact and communicate with both the blog authors (the company) and other blog readers (the community)! Make your blog a window on your company and reach out to customers. Engage them, and ask them about both their good and bad experiences with your products and services.
“When you have authentic conversations with people, you learn enough to actually improve your product with them, freeing you from the need for the hard sell. No longer will you have to convince people your software is worth it, because by working with the very people you’re selling to, you’re guaranteeing a valuable product.” – Joshua Porter, Designing for the Social Web
Some retail web sites place their blog on the homepage of their store. Woot.com, an online retail web site features one discounted product per day on their homepage, and they present it in the context of a blog post. This product is then advertised via RSS and Twitter feeds, and the blog post attracts hundreds of customer comments and even more exposure every day. This daily blog guarantees a constant stream of fresh, new content and drives return visits.