Facebook Shops can deliver broad benefits

Some recent press articles have suggested Facebook shops are delivering less online sales than anticipated. With Facebook approaching one Billion subscribers many retailers had scrambled to replicate their e-commerce facilities within the social network assuming that sheer weight of numbers would make a Facebook e-commerce store a runaway success. That hasn't been the case for most.

"Facebook shops aren't just about monetary transactions," said Danny Bishop Creative Director at IMG Sports Technology Group.

"We launched our first Facebook stores in mid 2011 with the Carlton and Western Bulldogs AFL clubs. There is no doubt that the online shops we already provide for these teams currently provide more revenue than the new Facebook counterparts, but there are compelling reasons why these teams will continue to have an e-commerce presence within Facebook."

"One of the biggest problems faced by big brands on Facebook is the lack of data on the people who have 'liked' you," continued Danny. "The Facebook shop we developed is not only a commerce tool but a key tool in gathering permanent information about a club's fans."

IMG Sports Technology Group developed a Facebook store that seeks fan approval to provide the store with information about who they are before they start browsing products. This data, which includes name and email address, is then stored within the club's database and tagged as having come from the Facebook store approval process.

"With the biggest sporting clubs approaching 200,000 likes on Facebook in Australia they would dearly love to have data on all of those fans. With it they can find out who's already a member and who isn't, who's purchased something from them in the past or bought tickets to an event. Without that sort of data you cannot build a relationship with these fans and with clubs seeking greater engagement with their wider fan base, Facebook is seen as an ideal mechanism for doing just that."

Importantly the IMG STG Facebook store integrates seamlessly with all other online modules of the IMG STG platform. So stock levels and product management only need to be maintained in one backend interface for both Facebook and traditional e-commerce site created with the ShopDesq module. 

"We knew that teams and organisations would want a mature backend for handling pricing, stock levels and shipping information. Running a Facebook store needed to be as simple as choosing which products you want to offer online, not a whole new store to manage stock, new products, deleted products, pricing changes and orders."

"With the combination of simplicity and the usefulness of data gathered by the store we're certain that more and more clients will see great business reasons for choosing to launch an IMG STG Facebook Store."

"Retailers experiencing slow sales through their Facebook stores should perhaps look at the broader possibilities of customer engagement that can ultimately grow their business." said Danny.

For more information about the e-commerce facilities of IMG STG including our Facebook Store please contact our team at sales@imgstg.com or (03) 9864 1116

IMG Sports Technology Group are part of IMG - the Global Leader in Sports Media and Entertainment. IMG Sports Technology Group are responsible for over 1.5M member records and more than $100M in online transactions annually for dozens of national sporting bodies and hundreds of grass roots sporting organisations.  IMG Sports Technology Group specialise in working with sports and member based organisations to provide online solutions to manage their engagement with participants, members and fans.