With its 55 millions members, Facebook IS an interesting network to make your business move forward. Wisely used for right purpose, this network can be extremely powerful to increase your visibility, and probably your sales.
A new application (via Capitaine Commerce) providing online shops on Facebook is now available and retained my attention : Payvment.
Payvment allows you to create a little shop using Facebook; good news, because we’ll now be able to reach patheticest Facebook members which are lazy and don’t go outside of their favorite social network, offering them products directly on Facebook.
As Capitaine said, it would be a great idea to duplicate our online shops in Payvment version, and it would be easy. Design, layout, these are stuff you won’t have to care about because you’re stuck within Facebook’s design. This is good excuse to gain time, which isn’t bad for once…
I also think applications like Payvment are great solution for little sellers that only wish to sell 4 or 5 products, and that don’t want to invest time into learning e-commerce technics basics.
But… this kind of app brings a delicate question :
Will they replace traditionnal e-commerce platforms?
When you think to it, it’s quite frightening … but I would be surprised if this happens.. because :
- On every e-commerce website, customer experience is different and variety of experience is great. I prefer to buy an iPod on apple.ca than on Payvment Apple’s page (if there’s one).
- Such applications will keep few options because of Facebook framework environment.
- Not everybody likes Facebook and its habit to make your personnal informations its own. If it becomes as easy to profile your buying behaviour (because these shops are on Facebook), don’t you worry about it?
Anyway, Payvment is an interesting solution that I’d like to try soon. It cool be great to offer its integration to customers that use Facebook for promotion… but, as I said before… it won’t replace a true e-commerce website!
What do you think about it?
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As interesting as it sounds i doubt Facebook will ever replace online shopping sites. The main reason people visit Facebook is because they want to interact with each other, and even though they might trade various things using their Facebook account, they don’t go there especially for this purpose. I have a Facebook account for several years now but i always choose to buy the items i need from special online shopping sites, they make the shopping experience more pleasant in my opinion.
I can see Facebook’s marketplace giving ebay a good fight, but I can’t see this new app taking over from business ecommerce websites at all.
Ultimately, Facebook is primarily seen as a network of individuals, not businesses, which is ideal for creating a garage sale style site, like marketplace, where the individuals are the sellers, but I think it would simply not suit anything too overtly commercial. People mentally go to facebook to play, not to shop.
Amazon’s marketplace is far more suited to such ventures, and I can see that ultimately killing off small shopping sites, with Amazon turning increasingly into a Mall of individual shops, rather than just a department store.
Facebook est devenu si populaire qu’il est difficile de trouver des gens qui sont là non enregistrés. Je voudrais obtenir mon casino est devenu aussi populaire. En attendant, je vais mettre à jour mon statut sur Facebook.
it is true… social media site like Facebook, Hi5 or Twitter become a powerful tool to make money. This is the future for online business. ballbusting
i doubt Facebook will ever replace online shopping sites. The main reason people visit Facebook is because they want to interact with each other
yohimbine hcl
It’s another interesting sales channel but I can’t see it taking over. Ebay and Amazon are both huge in terms of traffic, but neither has managed to completly dominate ecommerce. I have both ebay and amazon stores, as well as my own shop (which generates the most sales). A facebook store would be a great addition, but I doubt its ever going to replace my main online store.