Le Web Paris '09 social commerce / e-commerce highlights

Here's my personal selection of e-commerce / social commerce moments from this year's LeWeb conference worth checking out, pulled-up straight from the Ustream feed of the event!

1. From the Main Stage: Always insightful business, company culture and customer service anecdotes and advice from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

2. From the Start up Competition:

- Storific, a set of tools enabling online retailers and their employees to manage their customer communications and promotions on twitter and Facebook in one centralized/shared dashboard (jump to 22:41 for their demo)

- Shutl, a cool service from the UK, turning competing courrier and express delivery providers into a real-time web service for online retailers, enabling online shoppers of retailers using the service to have their on-line purchases delivered within 90 minutes of checking out or selecting a 1 hour delivery window at a time of their convenience – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! (jump to 33:42 for their demo)

- Not e-commerce but still I had to plug them, they're awesome: Tigerlily, a CMS-like Facebook app to manage your Facebook Pages, so cool (jump to 28:53 for their demo)

3. Here's a way too short roundtable, with low-interest questions and answers, on "How has the real-time web changed your e-commerce business?", with Zappos (USA), Vente Privée (FR), Otto (DE). Too bad, the topic was well worth exploring fo real.

4. And here's a little bonus, Gary V's intervention, about "crushing it" and giving a crap about your customers, before the conference's closing remarks. Always hard-hitting and hilarious. Enjoy!

ebay forays into physical retail and private sales

eBay announced plans to open "pop-up" boutiques in 12 cities across the USA in an effort to service holiday shopping.

Pop-up retail is IT right now...

Its first ephemeral store popped up on November 20, in a 5,500-square foot Manhattan location, and will close its doors on November 29.


Also, eBay has launched its very own closed-community event sales website, Fashion Vault... except it's not closed :)

Fashion Vault is open to all eBay members and offers free US shipping. As usual, sales events last for two to three days only, and quantities are limited. Currently on sale: DKNY.

Cool e-commerce & social commerce info this week

Argh. Can't bring myself to post all this info I found this week...
So here's my very own weekly review of things worth noting:

Thanksgiving / Black Friday: US online retail picking up?
According to Mint.com
According to Forrester
According to ComScore

eBay targeting $500m GMS by mobile users this year!
That's a lot. And they're launching a new app called 'Deals Today'.

Woot! launches deals.woot! and it's awesome
A wooters-powered deal finding community website

Milo.com: a very well designed product finder driving traffic to local stores
Complete with price comparison, real-time inventory in stores near you, and consumer reviews straight from the stores' websites. It's Milo.com.

Noteworthy social media tactics by major retailers
Toys'R Us's cool Facebook-only Black Friday catalog and mystery deals campaign

IKEA's genius Facebook campaign:


That's it for this week!

xoxo

Michael.

Storenvy.com, the social store community, is live and it's awesome.

Gorgeous design.
DIY stores.
Community-enabled shopping features.

I love it.

Check it out: http://www.storenvy.com

"On one side, Storenvy is a series of online stores run by independent sellers. "The little guys." Stores are fully customizable, with a feature-rich store admin panel, and completely FREE.

On the other side, Storenvy is a network of shoppers who can shop across all of those stores at once, interacting with each other by watching what notes and ratings they leave on products and stores throughout the site. It's like following your friends and style icons on a shopping spree, watching what they pick up and what they actually buy."

Be Your Own Social Media Director | via Practical Ecommerce

In this edition of "Ecommerce Know-How", Kevin Patrick Allen from Practical Ecommerce shares three roles the owner and de facto social media director of an ecommerce company can play and how, by incorporating those practices within his business, he can better reach the new age of consumers online.

French private shopping club Vente-privée.com, an e-commerce European success worth USD 1.5 billion

From Techcrunch Europe, an update on private shopping clubs in the US (a.k.a. closed-community shopping websites), on the interest from e-commerce power players on this awesome business model... and on the mother of all private shopping clubs, Vente Privée.

"TechCrunch Europe thus understands, from some very good sources, that Gilt, Amazon and eBay are all actively looking at acquisitions in the European private shopping club space. The price for Vente Privée alone is being talked about in terms of a $1.5 billion sale. Some sources even put the figure at between $2 billion and $4 billion.

One VC I spoke to said Vente Privee was “very attractive” to the big ecommerce beasts like Amazon and eBay, and a roll-up of these types of clubs is potentially in the offing across Europe. Another said “It would be a good move – depending on price – from either Amazon or eBay.”

Read the whole article here.

"Faceshopping": Carrefour launches exclusive live shopping deal application on Facebook

Here's a little social commerce app we designed and launched at Publicis K4 for Carrefour, the #2 retailer in the world.

It's called "Faceshopping" and it offers daily shopping deals for Facebook members only.

Launched on September 22nd, it is the first application of its kind.

Reviews are starting to show up accross the Web...

Go ahead and try it for yourself...
All of your comments and ideas are welcome, so we can make it better over time.

(A special shout-out to the fine folks at KRDS for the great work!)

Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne Interview at Shop.org

A very interesting interview of the CEO of one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the US, based on the private sale model born in France, during the Shop.org annual summit which ran from September 21-23, 2009 in Las Vegas.

Susan Lyne talks about why the Gilt Groupe website is so addictive to shoppers, how retail is just repackaged entertainment, and announces a new venture...

Read it all here.

Top 10 Web 2.0 Activities for Ecommerce | via GetElastic

"Retailers often wonder what Web 2.0 / social media activities to be involved with, so this post ranks what I believe are the top 10 Web 2.0 activities for ecommerce based on their business impact."

1-800-FLOWERS.COM Sets Up Shop Inside Facebook

"In another testament to the notion that Facebook is quietly turning into the internet on top of the Internet, online flower retailer 1-800-Flowers.com has launched an e-commerce store inside its Facebook Page."

On step further into True Social Commerce after launching their Alvenda shopping widget...

Once again, 1-800-Flowers leads the way in this type of ventures.

Can't wait when Facebook launches their proprietary payment platform. There are going to be a LOT of shops popping up WITHIN Facebook...

From Techcrunch.

... And Zappos launches my.zappos

Check out my.zappos.com:

- Add stuff to your closet

- Share items with friends

- See what your friends think!

At eBags.com, video and social marketing go hand in glove - via Internet Retailer

"At eBags.com, about 1,700 unique visitors view videos each day and the retailer distributes its videos liberally across a wide variety of marketing channels, including e-mail campaigns, affiliate programs and on various social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Videos from eBags.com posted on YouTube since last fall have been watched by almost 19,000 unique visitors."

eBags.com's videos are product demos, hosted by category/product managers, with the occasional event video (overstock sale, brand advertising or the 10 millionth bag delivered...)

One cool feature is the 'BUY NOW' button in the video player control panel, which enables viewers to browse product thumbnails from the featured product to help jumpstart the shopping process. The video center and player are provided by LiveClicker.

The whole story from Internet Retailer is here.
And the eBags.com video section is here.

And hereunder the video of the 10 millionth bag delivered :

1-800-Flowers Claims First Retail Transaction Inside Facebook - via GetElastic

1-800-Flowers has embedded its e-commerce widget into its Facebook Fan Page, and goes down in history by claiming the first retail transaction within Facebook.

At 11:50 am EST on July 8, 2009, it sold a “Slice of Life” for $34.99.

The whole story from the GetElastic blog here.

Augmented Reality Video Social Shopping!

Augmented Reality meets Motion Capture meets Social Networking meets Online Shopping :)

Zugara, a California-based interactive marketing agency, has just released a new product called the "Webcam Social Shopper".

It's an online shopping application, which couples the features of Augmented Reality and Motion Capture. The Webcam Social Shopper app allows to seemingly hold articles of clothing up in front of yourself, while it tracks your movements so you can interact with the site's content when standing several feet away from your computer's controls. And it's Facebook Connect enabled, so you can share pictures of yourself wearing the reality-augmented clothing with your friends.

Here's a video demo from Zugara:

optaros ebook: 5 Winning Strategies in Social Ecommerce

Optaros has just published a free ebook on the 5 social media integration trends that they believe will have an impact on e-commerce.

You can download it here.

Tweba turns Twitter into a social marketplace | Via VentureBeat

Tweba (formerly Tweebay) aims to bring the power of Craigslist and eBay to the swap meet-like community of Twitter, allowing users to sell and buy goods as they stream in real time.

You can sign-up/log-in to the service using your Twitter or Facebook account.

Does the UX ring a bell? :)

Indeed, Tweba makes extensive use of the Twitter API... and of its user interface design.

Via VentureBeat

Oldy but goody: How Retailers Can Sell More Online With Social Commerce

Interview of Jay Shaffer of PowerReviews, at last year's Internet Retailer conference, on how social commerce can help retailers sell more and better.



From Get Elastic

ShopTogether: bring your friends with you when you shop online...

US junior clothing retailer Charlotte Russe just added ShopTogether from DecisionStep on their online store.

ShopTogether is a hosted application for retailers that lets customers interact in real-time while surfing e-commerce websites.

ShopTogether is actually a toolbar that is displayed at the bottom of the site (à la Facebook), from which shoppers can invite their friends to browse/shop with them through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, email or instant messaging.


Charlotte Russe homepage with ShopTogether toolbar


Invite friends via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Email or IM

Once they accept the invitation, ShopTogether connects two or more friends for a joint shopping session. Shoppers can chat, view products, share favorites and ideas, helping shoppers making better buying decisions, thanks to the advice they get from their firends, just like in "real-life" shopping.


Undergoing shopping session with chat panel expanded from toolbar

Great integration of social services into the shopping experience.

I wish we could add video chat, and save shopping sessions /shared favourites for later in the shopper's account...

A one-up to the FluidSocial product I reviewed a while ago, which integrated Facebook components into Jansport's website.

Social shopping for real: An embeddable widget to sell your stuff to your friends on social networks

Told'ya helps you build and display a storefront widget in about 2 minutes on your Facebook, Blog, MySpace... and populate it with stuff you would like to sell. Payments are made via Paypal and Told'ya gets a $0.99 cent fee per transaction.

This is social shopping in its purest form (C2C social selling): users sell stuff to people who are in their own social graph, using the platforms where they socialize with them...

Here's a screenshot of my demo store, as only US residents can publish a store:



Update: here's a competing offer called Cartfly, and a demo store widget:



Update 2: here's yet ANOTHER competitor: Put-A-Cart. Man this space is getting crowded...

Facebook friend-based merchandising now a reality for online retailers

Remember the Razorfish Facebook Connect scenario making e-commerce truely social? Well, it's not a scenario anymore: digtal agency Fluid launched their FluidSocial product, enabling Facebook Friend-based shopping and merchandising; and implemented it on Vans.com and Jansport.com.

FluidSocial enables conversations (comments and live chat) with your friends directly on a product page.

Great feature! Better retention and conversion are direct consequences:

- For online retailers, these friend interactions allows for shoppers to never leave the site to get feedback from friends.

- For shoppers, it lets them see ratings, comments and real-time chat on specific products from friends whose opinions they value and trust more than from strangers.