etailology

I received an unusually high traffic boost yesterday on the mere mention that Twitter might be useful for ecommerce. This in mind, it occurs to me that there might be a dearth of information about how etailers can capitalize on the more popular (but as-yet-uncommercialized-except-for-ads) online sites where we waste spend so much of our time as users.

Social Networking Meets Shopping

Facebook is one such site. While there are Facebook applications like Garage Sale which allow items to sell their “treasures” through the site, there is really no strong commercialization strategy for online retailers that has yet emerged — until I saw this article which referenced Chapters-Indigo’s use of an “Add to Facebook” button for their site. Make no mistake, this idea is genius.

Add to Facebook Wishlist Buttons

Many sites have wishlists, but sharing them is difficult (and makes users look like they are milking their associates for gifts). Further, the current wishlist paradigm makes the implausable assumption that a particular retailer is at the center of a user’s consumption space — that is, that 100% of their wishes can be fulfilled by a single store. While this conceit is almost certainly a source of delusion for the retailer, it forces wishlists to be stored in multiple locations all over the Web, which further reduces their utility.

Facebook is at the Center of Many Users’ Consumption Space

The idea of posting favorites, wishlists, and gift ideas on a person’s Facebook profile is both a natural act for the user and an easy connection for the gift-giver. Facebook becomes the aggregator of wishlists (note that it already notifies friends of your upcoming birthday). Wishlists are an aggregation of things from your site, and increasingly, Facebook is an aggregation of user preferences from the entire Internet, it is all about this act of aggregation, and there are two easy ways in which retailers can take advantage of this phenomenon:

1. Build a Facebook App just for your store, as people like Amazon and EBay have already done. Or, work with the developer of an existing “generic” wishlist to enable more direct linking/sharing from your site.
2. As a retailer, encourage people to discuss your product and share links to it. In the past, traditional “send to friend” functionality has been a must-have on ecommerce sites. Today, that functionality is best represented in the use of Facebook’s “Share” link/bookmarklet. Embed it into ALL of your product pages.

Ultimately, recognizing that user’s center their consumption patterns around online behavior — rather than particular online stores — unlocks a world of possibilities for more effectively leveraging social networking into etail. This Facebook opportunity is but one example.