Social networking site, Facebook, is used by more than 350 million people to share personal and business with friends, colleagues, customers and prospects. The social media giant will soon be turning six and has not ceased to attract members with demographics that could serve e-tailers well in terms of extending market reach and increasing branding.

Clearly, social media sites are amongst the top referring sites for many marketers particularly retailers, which then leads us to the question, is Facebook e-commerce for you?

Some of you may think it’s risky business, however, it can also represent an invaluable source of marketing for your business.

Social media merging with online shopping is definitely not a bad idea, particularly since the latest Nielsen figures tell us consumers spent 5 and a half hours on social media during 2009.  Users are used to spending a lot of time in their favorite social network, hence integrating your business into these channels will be seen as a perfectly natural integration of the two.

Social network users are feeling more confident, thus increasing their level of participation and interaction on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the likes and therefore, retailers are finding in these, a solution to drive more customers and monetize more.

Choosing to leverage Facebook business options can provide a new vehicle  for your customers and potential prospects to interact. Furthermore, it can help you acquire new customers as your Facebook fans spread the word about your business to their friends and network.

More reading www.cnn.com.

While brands have previously used Facebook to mainly set up product ad campaigns, fan pages as well as promote and sometimes sell products on a separate tab on their fan pages, now they can sell directly off the feed page.

The functionality, however, comes from Resource Interactive and it’s Off The Wall social ecommerce technology which allows fans to purchase products directly from their live feeds, news feeds or the brand’s actual wall without ever leaving Facebook.

It’s the first time Facebook has enabled brands to post items for purchase as status updates.

The first retail firm to test out this new ecommerce technology was The Limited which offers special discounts to their fans on specific products giving them the opportunity to buy their products right off  of Facebook without having to navigate away from any page.

The idea behind this, according to Facebook, is to engage consumers in unique and relevant brand experiences without having to abandon their social networking environment.

On the other hand, it represents a great opportunity for brands to promote the kind of viral sharing results marketers aim towards plus, it’s a way to involve more fans and reward them on special occassions by giving them access to limited edition products, hot items or amazingly attractive discounts.

The brand’s status update featuring the special offers and discounts can also be shared with your friends since the ecommerce functionality is maintained throughout all of Facebook’s pages.

What do you think? Could your brand/product benefit from this new feature? Are you willing to try it?

Text is in Italian, however, you can find the scoop of the story in this post.

Good reading!

The conference, which was dedicated to e-Commerce in the consumer electronics sector and the shift between online versus offline consumption, opened up with Antonio Besana, GFK’s Director, giving a brief sum up on the latest findings and emerging e-commerce trends.

He explained how there’s an increasing number of consumers who are now shopping online in a more frequent manner, which is resulting in that the Internet remains the fastest growing sales channel.

e-Commerce itself rose significantly in 2008, a growth which is primarily attributable to the fact that more people are shopping on the net than ever before. In 2008, the number of online purchases rose by 12% to 29.5 million out of an estimated spend of 252 million euros in Europe, according to a study by casaleggio.it.

Amedeo Guffanti (see image below), 77Agency Partner and Business Strategist, intervened by explaining that despite the economic crisis the world is facing today, e-Commerce is proving to be a great opportunity for branding and having online presence, especially for companies that had never before considered the Internet as an alternative marketing strategy, making particular reference to the fashion and luxury goods sector. Some brands 77 is currently working with that have decided to tap into the online world include Athlete’s World, Miss Sixty and Dimensione Danza.

In conclusion, we can say that today’s crisis has helped businesses expand their horizons and marketing strategies. Some more than others have in fact realized that the integration of the different channels- online, offline, mobile- serve as great contribution to improving customer loyalty, client interaction and the overall availability of products and services. In this sense, it is of great importance companies begin jumping on the bandwagon in order to survive the economic downturn and seek for innovative, non-traditional marketing methods.

Advertising Age’s White Paper presents us with a complete study on recession-time case studies along with some of the most iconic online marketing campaigns that have succeeded during downturns from all industry sectors. Why am I saying this? Just so we can keep our chin up a bit and realize that there’s also a good side to the story.

Yes, it is indeed a dull period, however, we can say the Internet has been a soothing instrument for us and companies themselves in times of economic suppression especially in the midst of the Holiday Season. As Mike Sachoff from WebProNews puts it, holiday shopping has become a bright spot in the woeful economy.

According to comScore, through the first days of this year’s holiday shopping season up to Dec. 7th, online spending has reached up to $15.63 billion dollars. Just between December 1st and December 7th sales summed up to $4.45 billion- 7% more than last year.

“The online holiday shopping season has picked up noticeably since Thanksgiving as consumers have given in to the holiday spirit – and very attractive retailer discounts,” said ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement. “While this growth is certainly a positive development in this tough retail season, it also needs to be put into perspective.

This sudden awakening in spending is definitely good news and it’s bringing us all a little bit of hope regardless of the current situation. Not only that, but websites are becoming more interactive and user-friendly since Internet usage has increased.

Multiple testing of online stores has become critical for retailers. Today, most online stores have added rich-media content like videos, photos and made their sites more interactive and less complicated for users to enjoy hassle-free online purchases.

To read more about comScore’s Holiday shopping research visit www.comscore.com.

As Christmas draws near and everyone makes plans for their upcoming vacations, people are also looking into making their Holiday gifts and thoughts, unforgettable ones. Send a Thought, an online gifting service, brings boxes of thought for all occasions to the tip of your fingers.

Not only are we traversing a period where emails, the Internet, mobiles and the new media have become natural allies for many of us, but the holiday shopping frenzy is not something we particularly enjoy.

Send a Thought is one original way to make that special someone smile and create the feeling of  ‘letterbox glee’, as referred to by its creators.

Remember how good it felt receiving beautifully wrapped gifts throught the post? Send a thought is bringing you the opportunity to choose from a selection of genuine gifts (not the typical box of chocolates, flowers or greeting cards) and motives: thank you, congratulations, birthday, thinking of you, love, good luck, engagement and whether you want your gift to come as a little thought, photo thought or a thoughtful box. Thoughtful boxes are available all ready-made or you can also create your own.

As professed by them, the sole purpose of Send a Thought’s online life is to help you make someone smile with a thoughtful gift, beautifully wrapped and sent through the post.

Ready to make someone happy today? Visit www.sendathought.co.uk or email them at corporate@sendathought.co.uk.

TiVo, the provider of technology and services for digital video and Amazon.com have set to introduce a ‘product purchase’ feature today that will bring the idea of home shopping to a different level and redefine the art of watching TV.

Starting now, both TiVo subscribers and Amazon customers will be able to shop for anything they see on television using their remote control. (FYI: service is only available for all subscribers except those using TiVo on DirectTV). So, everyone with a TiVo at home will have on their on-screen menu, the option to buy CD’s, DVD’s, books, etc, specially those promoted on famed talk shows like ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ or ‘The Late Show’ with David Letterman.

Basically, next time one of those presenters hold up and promote some kind of product during their show…‘click’ and you will get.

TiVo is offering a great opportunity to advertisers with this new feature and are on the brink of becoming pioneers of what could be the latest breakthrough in advertising technology for the television industry.

Today Amazon.com announced the launch of its Video on Demand online store where users will be able to pick over an array of 40,000 movies and television programs right off the bat.

You choose, you order, it streams.

Clearly it’s a lot better than most internet video stores, won’t name call, which require you to chill in front of your computer for hours before you succeed to download onto your hard drive. You’ll find that the majority of people don’t have the time or patience to sit around and wait for downloads to complete.

“Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button,” claims Amazon’s digital media VP, Bill Carr. I couldn’t have explained it better.

To support high quality streaming and downloading, Amazon.com has partnered up with Sony as a start, in order to enable its Internet video store into the Sony Bravia TVs, through Sony Bravia’s Video link device. Other deals will be on their way in conjunction with other manufacturers and Internet devices.

Some cool features:

Less downloading time

You can store all your video selections in “Your Video Library”

You can log on to any computer, anywhere, or device and be able to access the desired video

2-minute previews will begin running the moment you visit the title of your selection

No Commercials!

Consumers do still not all trust online shopping, reports

MSNBC.com. 77 alerts marketers that this report should shift the focus of advertising from e-commerce newbies to experienced online buyers. The report says that the people who are not shopping online yet, probably never will. E-Commerce will grow nonetheless, since current online shoppers will continue to buy more products online.

In an extreme point of view, this means that marketers should from now on basically ignore the part of the online community that has never bought anything online yet. Instead, most e-commerce advertising should be directed at the online community that has experience buying items online. Channels to do this at would include the online shops themselves, but also, for a broader range, for example payment method sites. If you can single out the existing users of e-commerce, and then grab the attention of people interested in your brand, you will be steps ahead of the competition.

If your site supports e-commerce, this research gives a good overview of what customers want. Sterling Commerce and Deloitte found out what the key points are for customers that order products, whether that is online, via catalog or from a physical store. The most important results are published at eMarketer today. The research further gives an overview of online versus offline buying, and the advantages customers see in both channels.

This graph is taken from a July 2006 study by the e-tailing group, in partnership with J.C. Williams Group and StartSampling.

What can be drawn from these results is the fact that customers often appreciate cross-channel shopping and turn to different resources for different questions about the product: according to eMarketer, over one half of the customers investigate a product in more than one retail channel. For example, customers often research a product online before buying it in an offline store. To us this means that online stores can be an added value to the customer, even if she doesn’t buy anything immediately online. Retailers should be aware of this hidden value of their online stores.