Fan Shop Delivers Facebook Sales

 
 
 
 
 
It’s the social media equivalent of the $64,000 question: Do Facebook users want to shop where and while they socialize?

Jones Apparel Group recently tested the waters with the debut of a pop-up Rachel Roy store on Facebook that featured a limited-edition, limited-quantity jewelry collection. In the first 24 hours the store was open, the brand averaged 1.5 new Facebook fans per minute, the event returned a total fan base increase of 35 percent – and the jewelry sold out in six hours.

Jones then launched a Nine West “lookbook.” With an eye toward attracting new fans and deepening its relationship with existing ones, the lookbook provided exclusive content, a private, brand-appropriate shopping experience – and shoppers received a Facebook-exclusive 15 percent discount. The results were equally impressive.

The application used by Jones Apparel, Fan Shop, was developed by San Francisco-based Fluid. Fusing brand, commerce and community, Fan Shop is the Facebook shopping component of social shopping platform Fluid Social. Fan Shop embeds a unique, highly branded fans-only shopping experience directly into a tab on a retailer’s Facebook fan page. Fans fill their shopping carts while exploring rich editorial content, all without leaving Facebook.

Unlike first-generation tools that merely replicate a retailer’s catalog in a Facebook tab, Fan Shop enables immersive brand experiences that fully integrate shopping alongside the shopper’s wider social network.

“If you’re going to blend e-commerce and social media, there can be no such thing as a cookie-cutter approach,” says Fluid CEO Andy Lloyd. “Each shop has to be different and engaging in its own way. It should feel curated and special.”

The goal, he says, is to “deepen the relationship with the brand. The idea of exclusivity quickly gets watered down if something is there all the time or is immediately made available elsewhere. The idea is to use this type of shop to create demand and get fans excited about a brand and the personal relationship they’re cultivating.”