For the last few years, Facebook hasn’t exactly enjoyed a
sterling reputation when it comes to eCommerce. In fact, when news famously
broke in 2012 that several major retailers were shuttering their Facebook
storefronts just a few short months after launch, Facebook commerce or
“F-Commerce” looked like a total flop.
But, while the company took a PR hit and F-Commerce bottomed
out with a resounding thud, the company persistently retooled, experimenting
with auto-fill features and P2P payments. Those efforts culminated with the
launch of Messenger for Business at this year’s F8 Developer Conference, and
now retailers have a reason to seriously think about F-Commerce again.
But rather than try to rebuild the Facebook storefront
concept, the world’s largest social network is appealing to merchants by giving
shoppers the ability to leverage their Facebook identities on retailers’ own
properties. It also unifies the post-purchase experience, so that customer
support messages appear in a single thread rather than several separate emails.
There’s huge value for retailers in leveraging customer
identity, perhaps most apparently due to consumers’ overwhelming desire for
personalization based on brands being able to access their data, provided
consumers have control over how their information will be used.
Many eCommerce businesses look to customize experiences for
consumers based on their tastes, whether those tastes come from identities from
Facebook, Google+ or even gleaned from registration forms. Warner Music Group,
KLM and the NFL stand out as great examples of how leveraging identity creates
more relevant marketing, stickier user experiences and more customer loyalty on
eCommerce properties.
Of course, the concept of using Facebook identity on sites
isn’t new, nor is the concept of third-party identity in general. Tools like
social login have existed for years, and Facebook continues to be the dominant
third-party identity provider on the web. But with Messenger, Facebook is
implementing the connection to its platform at the end of checkout, a
remarkably clever way of creating identity-driven shopping experiences without
disrupting the checkout flow.
Online shopping is an incredibly delicate type of
interaction that merchants spend remarkable amounts of time, money and effort
perfecting. One extra form field in the checkout process, one extra click or
five extra seconds for a page to load can cause customers to give up and buy
from somewhere else.
The dreaded phenomenon of shopping cart abandonment happens
to every eCommerce business to some degree, but those businesses take careful
steps and repeatedly test their checkout flows to ensure abandonment rates
remain as low as possible.
This is precisely why Facebook didn’t introduce Messenger
for Business as a tool to be inserted into the middle of the checkout flow –
convincing merchants to implement it would have been an incredibly tough sell.
Adding more clicks and more page loads would bog down the checkout flow and
deter shoppers who want to make their purchases as quickly as possible.
Instead, Facebook is shrewdly offering Messenger for
Business as a bolt-on marketing and service product at the end of the shopping
experience by asking users to “log in” (use their Facebook identities) for
better customer service and shipping updates post-purchase.
As a result, merchants get a chance to create ongoing
relationships with their customers, which can lead to better customer loyalty
and future purchases, all without compromising delicate and manicured checkout
flows. Basically, because purchases have already been completed, merchants have
little to lose and much to gain by seriously thinking about implementing
Messenger for Business.
For all the lumps Facebook took during the original
rise-and-fall of F-Commerce, the company clearly learned from its mistakes and
seems to be following two main principles as a result: 1) Third-party
storefronts on Facebook are not tenable, and 2) Facebook users’ identities are
the biggest draw for merchants. By following these notions and by staying out
of the checkout flow, Facebook might truly be on to something, and Messenger
for Business might be the Trojan Horse to finally convince merchants to latch
onto F-Commerce 2.0.
Patrick Salyer is CEO of Gigya, a customer identity
management platform and Facebook developer with more than 700 customers,
including Fox, Forbes and Verizon. When he is not helping brands create
identity-driven relationships with their customers, Patrick enjoys captaining
the Gigya basketball team against formidable rec-league opponents, playing
Settlers of Catan and spending time with his wife and two daughters.
Source From:- http://www.adweek.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment