Social eCommerce Best Practice Implementation Guide 12/25/10

As eCommerce businesses increase their use of social network connectivity to offer enhanced online shopping experiences there is a growing need to develop a set of best practice implementation guidelines to ensure an enhancement of the online customer journey while maximising the utility of social network integration tools.

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This is a working article.  It’s far from complete and I encourage anyone to contribute their thoughts. If you want to  leave a comment you will get full attribution for your contribution the next time this guide is updated.  Here goes:

Opting In or Out of Social Network Connections

Switching on a a social network connection to an eCommerce store should be as easy as subscribing or unsubscribing from an email list. This is permission based marketing.  For example on Amazon.com, you can easily add or remove Facebook data via Facebook Connect.  The options are clearly marked and easily accessible.

Product Recommendations

The benefits include personalised product recommendations based on your tastes as indicated on Facebook.  What I found really useful was the connections made to my friends’ upcoming birthdays and suggestions for gifts they would probably appreciate receiving.  Following this move, I imagine the ability to purchase products on Amazon.com with Facebook Credits is not too far fetched an idea.

User Generated Content

Product Reviews: Recommendations from friends and family are statistically proven to be the most trusted and the most likely referral to lead to a purchase decision.  Social networks are decision drivers.  Reviews from connections should be the first ones displayed.

Site Registration

Bypass the need for the user to create a new set of login credential for your website by allowing them to use their social network id instead.  Facebook Connect, Registration, Twitter and OpenId all provide this functionality.  The reduced friction is likely to lead to increased conversion.

Ecommerce Platform Selection

Some shopping cart platforms are more extensible than others. Some have buit-in or modular social commerce features that can be plugged-in.  What is the best social commerce / f-commerce platform for new businesses coming online ?

Ongoing Communication

As people spend more time on social networks, eCommerce retailers should cater to this change in online consumer behavior by providing additional marketing message options beyond email.  Creating social profiles using a tool like Flowtown or Rapleaf will help identify which networks to target and also enable more tailored and ROI boosting communications.

The Facebook Like button

This social bookmarking tool similar to Digg and Stumbleupon.  However, it is also the foundation of the Open Graph, which forms the backbone of Facebook’s social (semantic) search engine.   For example, Bing Social displays search results liked by your Facebook friends.  This highlights the growing importance of social networking connections to search engines that are focused on delivering more relevant and useful results to their users.

The Like button can be added as a single site-wide entity.  However, the recommended approach is to link it to individual products and services and tailor the message that goes into Facebook’s newsfeed to pitch the liked element and also provide a brief description of the site it’s from.

Resource Allocation

Appropriate human resource allocations should be made to social channels. Appoint atleast one specialist to coordinate all social network communications.  This person will be responsible for all audience engagement.  They sit between customer service and marketing teams, work unconventional hours and understand how to take advantage of the intricacies of these rapidly evolving consumer touch points.

Social Network Storefronts

Part or all of a catalogue can be displayed on a Facebook Page.  Some businesses choose to display their entire catalogue (thousands of products) on Facebook.  Is it better to list a select few products or everything?