Here’s the presentation from last week’s Strands Recommender (social recommendation engine for e-commerce) webinar on social commerce, “Going Social: Creating A Social Shopping Strategy That Boosts Sales & Connects With Your Customers” featuring a teardown of the Heels.com deployment of social commerce.
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Presented by Suleika Bloom (Social Media Director, Heels.com), along with Trevor Legwinski (Strands’ Marketing Director), Sucharita Mulpuri (VP Forrester), the webinar – with sound can also be viewed here (although it’s on the buggy instantpresenter app which triggers slow flash script warnings, and frequently freezes).
But in a nutshell the Heels.com social commerce strategy consists of the following:
Heels.com Social Commerce Strategy
Offsite:
Facebook
- To showcase products and solicit comments (fans who comment on Heels.com Facebook page have a $ value 400% more than those that don’t)
- Alvenda‘s Facebook wall store to sell directly from users’ walls
- Custom Facebook application (Shoes! Virtual Dream Shoe Closet) – 20K active users
Twitter
- Newsfeeds @highheels, @heels_girl
- Dealfeed @heeldeals
YouTube
- Heels TV Channel – previews, scoops, shows
Social Shopping Portals
- Contests e.g Paris Hiton contest on Polyvore
Other
- Presence on Flickr, LinkedIn, Wishpot (wishlists), and Formspring (feedback, service)
Onsite:
- Facebook social plugins (e.g. Like button)
- Personalized Recommendations (Strands Recommender)
- Customer Ratings & Reviews (Rate Voice, Strands Recommender)
- Video section (Heels TV) (Video Showcase of Shoes -> 10% less returns, drives traffic, viral – get embedded)
- Use company blogs (high.heels.com, heelsandthequeencity.com
- (Other) Vee24 – video chat based live customer service
Top takeouts from Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuri- who prefaced the Heels.com content with some useful market analysis:
- Social media marketing accounts for 1-5% of digital marketing budget – with ratings and reviews, blogs (micro- and regular blogs), and social recommendations seen by Forrester’ panel of 1,500 marketing and strategy professionals as the top ranked social media marketing solutions
- Forrester suggest that the biggest benefit of social is listening; don’t expect huge, easily quantifiable ROI
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Trevor Legwinski and Paul Marsden, Strands Recommender. Strands Recommender said: RT @marsattacks Presentation: Social Commerce Teardown – How Heels.com Deploys Social Commerce http://icio.us/z2s0st […]
Great to see what the successful guys are doing in this area! Thanks for the useful info. From a standing start 3 months ago, your site is rapidly turning me into a social commerce geek! Thanks Dr. Marsden!
Paul
Hi Paul, thanks for the kind comments – happy to share the infectious social commerce meme. Enjoying your blog too. Best, Paul
awesome post
thnx 4 all