Did you know that you can sell directly from Facebook, at no cost to you? You probably know that the fewer steps a shopper has to take to make a purchase, the more likely he or she is to purchase. The same is true for shoppers on Facebook, of course, which is why San Francisco-based Payvment has developed a tool that lets shoppers buy from your business without ever leaving the site. Introduced in November 2009, Payvment uses a PayPal shopping cart for its app to work with Facebook Pages.
Payvment converts your Facebook fan pages from marketing platforms into sales platforms, and it’s generally much easier to set up than it is to set up e-commerce on your website. Specifically, the free Facebook app gives you as a vendor everything you need to create a storefront on the social networking site, including a built-in, full-featured admin area. The Facebook app allows you to sell an unlimited number of items to your Facebook fans, who can now search and purchase your products across any storefront on Facebook. The idea of promoting your product to 500 million people (the number of people on Facebook, and growing) is commerce heaven! If you want to be part of the first wave and start your Facebook storefront, it’s time to get cracking! It’s well worth the investment to have a social media marketer set up and manage the site for you, or you can take the time to do it yourself.
Once you have your store installed, Facebook users can shop and make purchases from you without needing to leave Facebook. Your TRUSTe-certified storefront can be added to an unlimited number of Facebook pages. Integrated product search enables the world to discover your store’s items from across Facebook, and a universal shopping cart lets customers complete their purchases from any Payvment-powered storefront on the site.
In addition to its Facebook app, Payvment has a shopping cart web service which allows you to add a shopping cart to any website by adding just a single line of code. Their Open-Cart Network allows shopping cart systems to “talk to” each other, so if a customer leaves a web store without purchasing an item, their items will reappear across every shopping cart in the network. Now customers will be able to complete their purchases even if they are no longer on your storefront.
Payvment currently supports sales in more than 20 currencies with automatic conversion; PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover are all accepted. Other features include automated inventory control, email receipts, storefront comment capabilities and instant discounts for Facebook fans. Once you have your site functional, it will be time to start seriously promoting it on in all of your traditional media and on your website, Twitter and your Fan page to get the word out.
Since Payvment launched in November of ’09, more than 20,000 businesses and individuals have started to sell goods on Facebook and over 500,000 Facebook users have shopped for products in stores using the Payvment app. That’s an amazing adoption rate for just a year! When your customers start sharing your site with their friends, your sales have a very real opportunity to “go viral,” with satisfied customers doing your marketing for you by virtual word-of-mouth. Powerful! Since more people are communicating via social media than via email, you can’t afford to miss out on this opportunity.
Note to businesses large and small: If you are interested in selling your goods and services, it’s time to venture into the social media shopping waters!
For more information, contact Kelly Walker at Incyte Marketing: (541) 419-9976. Kelly@incytemarketing.com www.incytemarketing.com
