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The use of Facebook as a shopping portal is still in its infancy and marketing managers are still trying to understand how the Facebook platform can provide them with the means of growing the value of their brand(s) with a highly efficient means of monetizing it. One of the greatest concerns of Marketing Executives during recent years has been to find a way to quantify the ROI of Social Media. The simple metric of tracking the number of "Likes" that can be generated by a brand's "Page" is widely regarded as being greatly inadequate and many professionals admit to being bewildered in knowing how to transcend beyond this.

With 750 million users, Facebook is the largest "residential district" in the world that lacks a strong, vibrant and thriving "commercial district". On one hand, it is a salesman's dream and on the other, it is a marketer's strategic nightmare. At Sortal, our mission is to provide merchants with a rational means of entering into the Facebook community by equipping them with a sophisticated marketing toolkit together with a robust commercial framework so that they can successfully engage and convert people according to the unique culture that exists throughout the Facebook society as a whole.

What makes Sortal unique from other similar f-Commerce propositions? The Sortal platform was designed with social networks user behaviour at its foundation together with an emphasis in helping merchants to enter the Facebook community according to the unique expectations and requirements of the community. Merchants that use Sortal have a unique mechanism to drive broader success of their Customer Loyalty Program by defining intelligent ROI metrics and choosing the best Sortal tool(s) for the job; with the by-product being increased brand value and sales. These merchants are able to entice, engage and energise a fan-base within Facebook and then streamline their ability to create a narrative and share their activities—even if they do not actually shop—with members of their social network. Through this process, new fans are recruited and merchants are then able repeat the cycle and appeal to an ever growing audience.

Sortal uses the Magento Open Source platform; which has quickly become the de facto standard eCommerce system and seems poised to dominate their market sector for the foreseeable future. The richness of the Magento eCommerce system provides merchants with a best-in-class architectural framework for managing products and inventories, publishing catalogues and handling transactions according to unique characteristics of each merchant. In addition to this, Magento provides a thriving ecosystem that extends the wealth of additional features at a very low development and maintenance cost. From a Sortal perspective, the combination of Sortal plus Magento means that merchants can publish elegantly branded catalogues to nurture customer loyalty and sell any product or service—simultaneously through multiple stores, using a single platform—and grow the volume of transactions using Sortal's unique set of Facebook marketing tools, within Facebook.

In this way, Sortal provides merchants with more than just a "Facebook store" or the number of "Likes" that a brand receives. Merchants love Sortal because it provides them with unprecedented access to social information and mechanisms, and a vastly richer means of calculating the ROI of Social Marketing in isolation from their non-social marketing activities, using an array of scenarios and data. Consumers love Sortal because it provides them with an entertaining and personalized Customer Loyalty Program, on a brand-by-brand basis, that cannot be achieved through any other Social Shopping or eCommerce system.

To view a basic demo: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Satinei/

For more information, contact us here at www.satinei.com

1. Extend prospect and customer base. Your brand and offering can reach a larger prospect base than it might through traditional media due to social media’s strong audience numbers, especially on sites like Facebook.

2. Support entire purchase process. While some media formats focus on  intent initiation and conversion-to-purchase, social media provides useful information at every step of the buying cycle including: need initiation and research, engagement, purchase, post-sales support including returns and additional product purchase, and advocacy.

Retail and brand businesses surveyed by Adobe Systems are overwhelmingly looking to deploy mobile websites as their mobile strategy, rather than downloadable apps, by a factor or 10 to one. The first annual Adobe Scene 7 Mobile Commerce Survey out this week finds that 80% of businesses surveyed are planning or having already deployed a mobile website. Just 8% cited a downloadable application-only mobile commerce strategy as their way ahead.
The survey uncovered four key areas of focus for businesses’ mobile strategies: promotions, commerce, product information and branding. 75% of respondents named promotions as the core of their mobile strategy, validating the mobile channel as an important method to drive traffic and support multi-channel commerce.
The survey also found that more than 55% of respondents cited full-screen image zoom and videos as indispensable viewing features for driving conversion, while an additional 96% asserted the most effective visual merchandising features were catalogues and brochures, alternative images, and zoom and pan features.
The survey also found that, while only 18% of respondents currently use rich visual merchandising features for mobile commerce, up to 81% said they had plans to deploy these features, implying richer mobile experiences will be created and offered over the next 12 months.
“Multi-channel shoppers tend to purchase more; therefore, companies must effectively engage customers by delivering consistent, rich experiences across all channels – including mobile – to maintain and fuel current double-digit e-commerce industry growth rates,” said Sheila Dahlgren, senior director of product marketing at Adobe. “The survey results demonstrate the opportunities that exist for companies to fully leverage rich visualization features to improve their emerging mobile presences and drive cross-channel sales.”

Shoppers spent £4.4bn online last month, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. This is the highest growth rate since June 2008.

In the first half of the year consumers have now spent £26.2bn online in the UK, Up 15% on the same period last year.  

 

Internet sales in May were worth more than 7% of the total UK retail market, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The experimental figures from the UK’s official statistics body, showed that the weekly value of internet sales last month was £409m. That equates to approximately 7.4% of total retail sales, excluding car fuel.
The figure is lower, however, than the 8.1% share of the market that online sales took in April, according to the ONS figures.

The ONS figures showed the value of sales in the non-store retailing sector, which includes online sales, grew by 12.2% in May, compared to the same time last year. At the same time the volume of non-store sales was up by 11.8%.

The rise comes against a context of an overall 4.4% rise in the value of retail sales in May. By volume, they rose by 2.2%.
Food stores saw sales rise by 1.4% in value, while growth in non-food stores came in at 5.4%. The largest rise (8.5%) was in non-specialised stores, while textile, clothing and footwear was up by 6.6%. Household goods stores lagged behind at 2.7% growth.

British Retail Consortium director general Stephen Robertson said the official figures bore out its findings. “Sales revived in May as summer weather arrived and distortions caused by the timing of Easter ended,” he said. He said television sales grew in May, driven both by the World Cup and discounts. But, he added: “With the tournament in full swing, there should be further gains for other football merchandise, such as flags and replica kits, which will show up in the June figures.” Among the goods to benefit, according to Experian Hitwise’s World Cup search figures, could well be vuvuzelas, since a 20% rise in searches has been recorded.

In the meantime, however, figures from BDO’s High Street Sales Tracker for the week ending June 13, showed that the football was keeping shoppers off the high street, with like-for-like store of just 3.6%. Fashion saw growth of 4.3% but non-fashion was static at 0.4%. Non-store sales, which include online and mail-order, rose by 32.3%.

Don Williams, head of retail at BDO LLP, said: 
“After two very strong weeks, there was a marked deceleration in high street spending this week with most retailers reporting slower growth. We didn’t see double–digit gains this time as excited England supporters, quite apparently, were preoccupied with supporting their favourite team.”

 

Retail sales continued to grow fastest online in March, new figures out today show.

Some £4.5bn was spent online in March, according to figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, a rise of 15% from the same time last year. The rise came as warm weather inspired people to shop for new clothes, where retailers saw a 27% rise in sales. Footwear and accessories were the fastest growing areas of the market, with rises of 58% and 55% respectively.

The figures contrast with today’s UK retail figures from the Office for National Statistics, which showed the value of total UK retail sales in March was up by 4.4% to an estimated £29.9bn. Food stores grew by 1.2%, while non-food stores were up by 6.7%. Clothing and footwear grew by 2.8%.
The ONS is experimenting with producing online figures, which showed that about £372m was spent online every week in March. It put the market share for online sales at 6.9%.

Shoppers with a multichannel strategy did best among online retailers, according to the IMRG figures. It found that those traders with stores and online facilities saw year-on-year sales rise by 28% in March, compared with 1% for online-only retailers.

Tina Spooner, director of information at IMRG, said: “There is a strong trend emerging showing that high street retailers with an online presence are playing an increasingly significant role in the e-retail sector. Retailers with a diverse multichannel offering will no doubt continue to reap the rewards of their investment in the online space.”

Chris Webster, vice president, retail consulting and technology, Capgemini, said the figures demonstrated the resilience of online retail. “The retailers themselves, particularly those with an online and a store presence, have fought hard to attract and retain customers, even in a period of political uncertainty,” he said.
Bruce Fair, managing director of Kelkoo UK, said: “We expect this rate of growth to continue through 2010 and predict that online sales could account for 10.5% of total retail spend by the end of the year.”

John Lewis said johnlewis.com sales were up by 48% on last year, while fashion sales more than doubled. Shopping.com said its home and garden sales rose by 51%.

The IMRG figures showed that online travel sales rose by 14% in March and chime with a report from Kelkoo, carried out by the CEBR, that forecast the UK would spend £41.1bn on travel in 2010, up by 2.4% on last year, or £669 per person. This follows a bad year for travel in 2009 when overall sales fell by 8.4%.

Online travel sales however, which grew by 18.5% in 2009 and, Kelkoo forecasts, will grow by 13% to £17.6bn in 2010.

However there were fears that the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which grounded UK planes for six days up to and including Tuesday, could cost the UK economy £500m and jeopardize the travel industry recovery.