Sales results for 2010 are impressive! Black Friday saw $648 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day so far, a 9% increase from last year. You know how it happened? Social networking, email, mobile marketing, websites, blogs, video and more!

Let’s take a moment to focusing on one of the ways stores achieved these numbers: Shopping on Facebook!  How easy is it to list your products on Facebook and create sales?

Some e-commerce solutions offer Facebook integration. It’s important to evaluate if Facebook is a good market for your services and products. For example, this could reflect how many fans you’ve grown in the past year through marketing on your Facebook business page. It’s also important to see what options you have with your current e-commerce platform. Do they make it easy to sell on Facebook?  In this article, I’d like to explore how two companies are helping businesses sell on Facebook.

One of the opportunities of having your products within Facebook’s framework is

• using the “Like” button for specific products
• getting comments on products and services
• customers can easily share the product’s info amongst friends
• get more exposure, leading to more online sales!

Core Commerce offers a Social Commerce application, a Facebook application, that allows you sell your products directly on your Facebook profile or page. An example of this is setting up a tab within your Facebook’s business page called “my store”. Inside this tab, the Social Commerce application is installed and customers can view specific products the business allows to be displayed. Customers can add these items directly to their cart and checkout through Core Commerce.

One example of a business using Core Commerce’s Social Commerce is Petandkennelsupply.com. If you visit their Facebook page, you can see that they set up a “My Store” that displays certain products. This is a very simple version of the application because as soon as you click a link to an item within the Facebook store, it immediately takes you to their main website to purchase the product.

Payvment is also offering a solution for business owners to sell on Facebook. Payvment allows you to build your Facebook storefront by uploading photos, setting prices, and more. It is TRUSTe certified, ensuring you with online privacy and safety. It works to allow customers to stay with Facebook’s comfort Zone, never having to leave the site. As a business owner, you can also add special discounts and “Like” to products, which contributes to a higher visibility.

An example of a store using Payvment’s Facebook feature is Grayce by Molly Sims. If you go to the Facebook page, you can see the list of products and if you click on one, you are taken to a page that pulls up Payvment E-Commerce Storefront Application which asks you to allow to share info. Once that is authorized, you are able to purchase the item. A nice feature of Payvment is that you never leave  Facebook’s website to make the purchase. You are also able to “share” and talk about the product.

Have any of you tried using these services or have found alternatives? Facebook is one of the most visited websites on the internet at this moment. Keeping in mind, it’s really about sharing and community building can help you keep perspective on if it would work as an outlet for your business.

Right now, using Payvment is free. You can manage inventory and storefront sales. No merchant account required, just use Paypal or Google Checkout.

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When I was down in Austin for SXSW back in March, I got to meet Carrie Atkinson, the woman behind “Sock It to Me“. I was pretty excited, I LOVE her socks. I remember buying them from her years ago at Saturday Market and buy them all the time at Sock Dreams. Socks are a present my husband knows I will always love!

Carrie’s done an amazing job growing her business based around socks! For over 6 years she’s built her business, one pair of socks at a time and you can now find her socks all over the globe in stores and online. I had a chance to interview Carrie about her business and her secrets to marketing her online store!

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• The passion behind the bread, Dave’s Killer style

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Facebook is much more than a place to talk to your friends and family. As people spend more time on this widely-visited website, Facebook has realized that value of becoming a powerful e-commerce tool. Businesses are now using Facebook to get people to directly make online purchases.

With different apps in the game, business can choose from a variety of ways. Having a Facebook Fan page is critical for a business. If you want to list products, business owners can use apps such as SocialShop. This app allows a business to choose the page they want a product to appear on and add a shop tab to it, add their store link,  or choose a product to display. When a customers visit the fan page, they click on “shop” and click on a product, they are taken to the shopping cart on the business website. There’s even a feature that allows the customer to “share” the product with their friends.

Who has tried and succeeded at Facebook Ecommerce? Proctor and Gamble launched a new diaper product on their fan site – 3 weeks before the product hit the shelves. In less than a hour, the company sold all of the 1,000 packs allotted for this ad campaign.

In addition to purchases, Facebook is influencing the  purchasing of products  - L.L. Bean uses Facebook to post news and events, promote its products and offer discounts through their fan page. They encourage customers to post photos of products and comment on photos left by others. Customers are continually posting about their hikes, camping, stories of their dog and products as well.  L.L. Bean announces promotions to its followers via blog posts, videos, and special offers and it’s working!

As a consumer, I believe we benefit on learning ways to get deals or  learn about new products hitting the market. I really hope to see more integration of reviewing/recommending products for friends and family on Facebook. I personally aren’t a huge shopper, but I find I make more and more purchases online. I know I’d much rather purchase based on recommendation than taking my chances on a new product I don’t know much about. What do you think?

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Oh, my, how the internet has changed our lives. Who would have imagined years ago that we could construct beautiful pieces of gemstone jewelry through a website? Gemkitty has tapped into this niche and has become a destination for ladies to create their own stylized jewelry.

How do they attract followers to come make a necklace? Check out my interview with Arwa Jumkawala, one of the owners.

What’s your business?

Gemkitty, Jewelry Designed by You is a online jewelry retailer, where you can customize your own gemstone necklace with a few mouse clicks. Your design is then handcrafted especially for you.

When did you start using social media and why?

As a web-based business, we knew we needed to be involved in social media in order to truly engage with our audience. Primarily, we use Twitter and Facebook, which we set up as part of our launch. Social media gives us a chance to have conversations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, and the real-time nature of the feedback has been fantastic.

Has social media changed your business?

Yes! In addition to being able to build relationships with our customers, it’s also helped me keep connected with fellow entrepreneurs. And it’s proved really effective at keeping me in the loop with jewelry fashion trends and local events.

How to you envision social media changing in the future?

I think companies engaging in social media will become smarter at actively engaging, rather than just broadcasting messages to their audience. We’re already seeing that trend, but it’s surprising to me how many people still don’t seem to understand why fans might be annoyed if all you tell them is: buy me, buy me, buy me.

Have a social media story you’d like to share?

Recently, we wanted to thank our earliest Facebook fans for their ongoing support. So we messaged them and offered them two pairs of earrings for free. No strings attached.  One pair was for them and one for a friend of their choosing. We received a lot of positive feedback, including emails from fans sharing who they decided to give their second pair to and why. Our fans seems to really appreciate the ability to treat a friend and we got a chance to expose our brand.

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What’s so special about bread? Dave’s Killer Bread has managed to make a great product and have a fascinating, compelling story behind the business. If you’d like to learn the story, check out this video. Relaying stories can be a challenge, but the marketing team at Dave’s have made quite an impact. Here’s what they’ve done right:

• DKB has an active Twitter account, where they share upcoming events and bread specials they are running at their store.. I noticed a lot of cross over between Facebook and Twitter accounts, which great since most folks use one or the other to communicate. Using both to share info can be really powerful.

• Using the power of video – they set up their own YouTube account where they are storing different interviews and video about the making the bread and Dave’s story.

• Teaming up with the Goodbyn Lunchbox for a sandwich contest. The content was based on people posting their favorite sandwich using Dave’s Killer Bread on the DKB Facebook page and the top 3 creative ones would be selected as the winners. The Goodbyn Lunchbox Facebook page lists all of the winners and points to Dave’s site for the recipes.

• Also, they are getting direct feedback from customers about the bread daily. One customer wrote in that they noticed that the “Good Seed” bread was undercooked in the middle lately and Dave’s team responded within the hour saying “thanks for letting us know and they will be fixing it soon”. That’s impressive.

Do you know of similar companies that are paving the road with passion about their product? Can’t wait to see what Dave’s Killer Bread will do next!

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