December 14, 2010 in Blog, Business, eCommerce, Social Commerce, Social Media by David Dungan

Drive Sales on Facebook with Social Commerce

Many Irish companies are active across social media in one way or another, primarily on Facebook. But what is the next step for these companies in order to turn Facebook fans into customers?

Social Commerce is the next logical step in the process.

Most Facebook users do not like to navigate away from the site when using so although they are willing to ‘Like’ a company’s page they are often unwilling to visit their website to make a purchase. Also as far as younger Internet users are concerned Facebook IS the Internet, and they will seldom navigate away from the site while online.

With Social Commerce it is possible to sell directly on Facebook without trying to pull users away from they’re recreational Internet use. There are dozens of  Facebook Apps to help you to set up a Facebook storefront and allow transactions through your existing eCommerce system or through PayPal. There are less that allow you to accept transactions by credit card and publish your store across multiple platforms including Facebook, MySpace and your website or blog.

At SocialMedia.ie we have reviewed 3 different options. The first is free to use (at the moment!), the second involves a monthly fee and initial setup fee, and the final option is pay per transaction with no monthly or setup fee.

Payvment

Payvment is an easy to use Facebook store front that is completely free and allows you to sell through PayPal. It is very simple to add multiple products although a little bit more complicated for shipping costs. Some nice features of Payvment are a universal cart that maintains items across multiple pages using Payvment, a search facility and a discount facility if users ‘Like’ your page.

The disadvantage is that it would be completely independent from any other eCommerce solution you are using and would need to be maintained separately.

BigCommerce SocialShop

Out of all the eCommerce solutions out there with Facebook Apps BigCommerce SocialShop is probably the most widely used with 47,998 monthly users. The App acts as a storefront on your Facebook page allowing users to click on a product and be taken to your BigCommerce store on your website. It also has a nice feature of allowing users to share your products with their friends.

The drawback is that there is no actual shopping cart within Facebook so users are forced to leave when they may not want to. BigCommerce plans start at $24.95 per month plus an intial setup fee of $49.95. Once you purchase an eCommerce plan for your website, you can use SocialShop on Facebook for free.

Owjo

Owjo is an eCommerce solution that does allows a more advanced functionality. Dublin based Owjo offer a customisable, portable store that accepts both credit card and laser card payments directly without re-directing customers to PayPal. The storefront can be easily setup free of charge and then used on Facebook and your website, as well as other social spaces such as MySpace, Bebo and WordPress simultaneously.

Owjo charge a flat rate of 7% per transaction but this does not include the payment processing fee which is a further 3% with Owjo’s payment processing system. This may seem a little steep but Owjo really is a complete eCommerce and Social Commerce solution and you won’t need anything else.

For more information on Social Commerce and how we can help you with it, please contact conor[@]socialmedia.ie. If you would like to know more about what we do take a look at some of our services and packages.