Gilt, the #1 US luxury flash sales club, has launched a Facebook fan-store offering fans early access to flash sales and special Facebook fan-exclusives. Every Monday, each of Gilt’s main departments – Women, Men, Home and Children will offer a special fan-first or fan-only Facebook exclusive. Member fans can login with their Gilt credential and buy directly on Facebook. Like Burberry’s sample-store that we featured yesterday, the Gilt fan-store is simple, slick and smart – as all e-commerce goodness in social media should be.
Offering exclusive experiences is a key and proven word of mouth driver, so by offering Facebook fans exclusives and special previews, Gilt will boost the word of mouth referral value of its members.
Going beyond the futility of simply replicating your e-commerce store in Facebook, offering fan-first and fan-only Facebook exclusives is smart – giving the Gilt fan-store a veritable raison-d’etre. And what we particularly like is that Gilt has worked hard to recreate a user experience within Facebook that matches the exclusivity and prestige that the brand seeks to command. Early f-commerce experiences delivered something akin to a social media equivalent of the mobile WAP site. Functional but hardly a brand-building experience… Today f-commerce is maturing, and consumers and brands will rightly expect an experience on Facebook that matches that on any other digital property.
One build we’d consider if we were working with Gilt would be to monetize the increased word of mouth generated by their fan-store, for example by integrating it further with Gilt’s member-get-member program. For example, liberating a trick or two from group-buy platform LivingSocial, Gilt could offer incentives if friends join and buy from Facebook fans-store flash sale exclusives. Likewise, Gilt could build on the special relationship engendered by fan-stores, and invite fans to vote on which brands future flash sales should involve. By engaging fans as ‘special advisors’ Gilt would drive brand affinity, loyalty and further boost advocacy.
Hey, thanks for sharing! Do we know who set this store up for them? Any one of the existing Social Commerce apps or developers? Thanks!
This app was built in-house. I’m one of the developers who built it. I’m glad you like it. We’re very proud of it.
Andy – slick looking facebook store, especially for in house. Not peddling any of my our wares, but I would like to invite you to take a look at our platform, shopigniter.com, and see how it stacks up against Gilt’s offering. Our thinking upon founding the company was that most eCommerce platforms were not optimized to capitalize on the social graph, hence they are not adequate to interact with customers in the social sphere. Gilt seems to have taken the bull by the horns with pioneering a social/sales effort through social avenues. I love Gilt BTW, great deals on great clothes!
Hi Laurie-
You might want to check out http://www.tabjuice.com. They have a facebook store app very similar to this one. They also let you design and customize your facebook storefront/shoppingcart on your fan page.
This Guilt app is great looking. You and your team did nice work Andy!
I fail to see how Gilt’s fan-commerce solution or offering is any better that that of BMW? (pretty as it is and well done!) if you truly wish to see an f-commerce solution which takes the visitor from initial interest through to sale completion without the need to leave facebook and still maintaining use of your existing merchant services then take a look at a new offering from the Online Ventures Group stable in the form of SiiP from Social Innovations. A demonstration can be seen by logging in to your facebook and searching for “Truffle shuffle” (a retro clothing store) accept the app and you will see the true future of F-commerce, feel free to contact me to discuss further 07811 488494, dmh@onlineventuresgroup.co.uk