As retailers continue to focus on the value of social media, it’s clear that Facebook is a driving, dominant force of customer engagement. The anticipated social commerce adoption is staggering, as 86% of retailers and consumer products manufacturers plan to implement a social commerce strategy in 2011, up from just 20% in 2010, according to Altimeter Group.
Catering to the growing demand for social commerce solutions, Fluid, an interactive agency with offices in San Francisco and New York, has launched Fluid Activate, a complementary solution to the company proprietary Fan Shop offering, designed to help eTailers engage with Facebook users. The solution is aimed at helping to drive engagement, loyalty and e-Commerce revenue. In addition, Fluid Activate offers rich-media merchandising capabilities to Facebook pages.
Retailers that have implemented Fluid Fan Shop are seeing results that include conversion rates of up to 14% and dramatic increases in Facebook fan growth, according to Fluid. Fluid Activate is designed to enable eTailers to activate a Facebook fan base by transforming the typical Wall Post text and photos into dynamic, interactive merchandising widgets and custom animations that are purpose-built to boost engagement and drive customers to a brand’s Fan Shop or e-Commerce site.
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Fluid Fan Shop fuses brand, commerce and community by allowing shoppers to “Like” and “Share” products and fill their shopping cart while exploring rich editorial content — all without leaving Facebook.
“Social networks — and Facebook in particular — give retailers a great opportunity to interact with shoppers in a more personal way, and to engage with them closer to where they live online,” said Peter Goldie, SVP & GM of Products and Marketing at Fluid. “With a Fluid Fan Shop, brands can reinforce their image and extend their reach into the fastest-growing social site on the web. The Fan Shop experience is so much more effective than just popping up a copy of a catalog, and our retail customers are seeing significant fan growth as well as increased sales and traffic to their e-commerce sites.”
Roots, a Canadian lifestyle brand, has deployed multiple Fan Shops over the last year, the first of which was used to announce a completely new collection created by artist and author Douglas Coupland. “Our Roots Facebook community has been very loyal, and for this new collection, we wanted to reward them for that — and let them share the excitement we feel about the wonderful clothing, accessories and furniture Douglas Coupland has created,” said James Connell, Senior Director of e-Commerce at Roots. “Based on the great success we’ve had to this point, we’ll be deploying other collections and special opportunities via Fan Shop.”
Rachel Roy, a division of Jones Apparel Group, began its Fan Shop with a three-day pop-up store that offered Facebook-exclusive products. Those products sold out within six hours and, during the first 24 hours, the brand logged 1.5 new Facebook fans each minute, increasing their total fan base by 35% in just one day and doubling it within the week, according to Fluid.
To infuse its heritage into its social media presence, The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company launched an interactive San Francisco Cable Car experience as its Facebook Fan Shop landing page. Using Fluid Fan Shop, Ghirardelli has added an interactive cable-car animation that lets shoppers experience its best-selling products in the context of San Francisco’s best-known landmarks.
A number of other retail brands have recently deployed Fluid Fan Shops, including The North Face, Kmart, White House | Black Market, Vans, Coach and Nine West.
