ChannelAdvisor

Why Retailers Should Be Thinking Like Media Producers

Become a media producer, drive demand and create new paths to conversion.

A couple of months ago, I attended Group Commerce's "ThinkCommerce" summit. Group Commerce focuses on e-commerce for Publishers, making their business adjacent to ChannelAdvisor if not completely overlapping. A lot of the content was still extremely informative for me. If you're interested in a snapshot of where the Media Industry's e-commerce efforts are, there's a lot of reports, slides, and videos at the ThinkCommerce website. I particularly recommend the Keynotes video presented by Forrester's Sucharita Mulpuru and Terence Kawaja.

The primary message in this summit that stood out to me as an e-commerce professional, is that the Media Industry is actively coming after e-commerce in 2013. With subscriptions and ad revenues both in decline, they have to. There is no choice in the matter.

The quote to the right was one of the big things that I heard the ex-News Corp Chief say. The whole message of this conference was that media companies have to enter e-commerce fast. This quote turns that proposition on its head. Retailers should be creating media to drive consumer demand. Retailers should become media companies that drive demand through media/consumer interaction. This is the primary idea that I took from the day.

What kinds of media could this include? Here are 3 simple things you can do to create media that helps build your customer community.

1. Video reviews & Lifestyle Videos

Video reviews can be a great conversion enhancer and present an opportunity to create a unique voice that your customer can relate to. Numerous studies have shown that including product videos can significantly enhance conversion rates.

Similarly to a review, lifestyle videos can provide an opportunity to connect with your consumer and provide great content for other marketing channels like email or social media. The next time that you conduct a product photography session, try capturing some video* of the shoot and editing the footage into a "Spring Preview" or "New Products" video. This can become a great recurring featurette to highlight on your homepage, blog, or marketing channels.

Retail brands that consistently feature content become regular destinations for consumers that want to know more about a product before they will make a purchase.

*Most digital point-and-shoot cameras are capable of capturing quality high-resolution video and many laptops and desktops come pre-loaded with video editing software (iMovie / Windows Movie Maker). Odds are you also have an employee that's already familiar as a hobbyist with the skills necessary to produce great video content to use in a pilot program. YouTube can host the videos for free. With an initial success you can justify putting more resources into a more substantial effort.

2. Top 5 List / Tips List

People love lists! Featuring a list of "Top 5 Products for... X" on your homepage will always attract clicks. There's no reason to rely on magazines and blogs to create these for you. Simply identify products with some common threads and pull them together with some thematic copy that appeals to the type of shopper that you’re targeting with each list. Consumers will use this when shopping for themselves as well as for others.

Products used to accomplish a consumer's goal can also be bundled together into a "Tips" list. For retailers of tools and hardware, try creating a list of products necessary for completing home improvement projects. For automotive retailers why not try writing an article about "5 Simple Projects to Pimp Your Ride."

3. Featured Product write-ups / Trend Alerts

Try to take a different angle on the product review. Is your brand identity tied to a region? Have any company connections to celebrities or athletes? Try working with strong personalities within or without your organization and have them integrate the products that you sell into their daily life, possibly with a regional twist if possible. Do you sell kitchen products? Have one of your employees that loves to cook try out a new product to make something and share the recipe.

If you see a category emerge within your products that is really moving, try building on that natural momentum. Feature the product category on your homepage. On the alert page, highlight what product trends your buyers need to know about with editorial and links to products that relate to this trend.

Hopefully, these ideas have sparked some creativity. Being a retailer can be about more than just the products you sell, but also about the personality of your Brand. Letting your consumers see into this personality is part of what will keep them coming back. The media companies are coming. As a retailer you are already ahead of them in knowing how to be successful at e-commerce. Now it’s time to show them how to create great content. 

Check out some of our customer success videos to see how we've taken a case study spin on content creation.  

Blog post by David Monterroso, ChannelAdvisor Senior Solution Consultant @MontyCommerce

Q4 2012 US Facebook Commerce Index

The Q4 US Facebook Commerce Index is complete.  Headline of the quarter: 12% growth! That's quite the leap from the average 8% growth for most of 2012. We also surpassed 500 million fans for the first time.  2013 could be the year the the total fancount of the Facebook Commerce Index hits 1 billion! 

The upper echelon of the top 25 stayed mostly the same--Victoria's Secret hasn't regained its spot from Walmart and Target, but Macy's had a pretty impressive leap for the forth quarter--up 3 positions! 

Macy's

From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday to Christmas to the "Week of Wonderful" after Christmas, Macy's never lets up.  The company is constantly updating its facebook page with contests, celebrities, charities, new men's apparel, kids, women's, beauty, the list goes on!  There is something for everyone in Macy's target demographic, and clearly it paid off this holiday as they jumped from 16th place to 13th place on the Top 25.

Amazon

Amazon doesn't have quite the volume of posts that Macy's does, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality.  Take, for example, the post below.  This was one of only 19 posts in November, but it got 45,539 Likes! 

Read up on all the charts of the Q4 2012 Facebook Commerce Index:

• Top 25 Retailers by Fan Count
• Top 25 Retailers by Fan Count Number Growth
• Top 25 Retailers by Fan Count Percentage Growth
  
  

 

November 2012 UK Facebook Commerce Index (UK FBCI)

This month’s UK Facebook Commerce Index has seen more dramatic changes to the Top 25. Six large retailers slipped down in the charts, while three soared up the table. Asda deserves a mention for jumping four places, with just under 100,000 new fans in 30 days. Amazon is the top grower this month, with an astonishing 410,521 new Likes in November. Overall, our Top 25 increased their fan count by 1, 487, 623 over the month. We will be releasing a deep-dive analysis of the UK FBCI Q4 results in January. In the meantime, Happy Holidays to all of our UK FBCI readers!

October 2012 UK Facebook Commerce Index (UK FBCI)

Though the next full UK Facebook Commerce Index will be a quarterly report published in January, we want to give you a sneak peek of who performed well in October. We had a new entry to our Top 25, with The Carphone Warehouse leaping in to 24^th position after 8% growth in October. Amazon continued its dramatic growth after adding an extra 527,027 fans and Dorothy Perkins saw a 22% increase in Likes in  just 31 days. Cumulatively our Top 25 now have 25,282,977 Likes to their name, and are each displaying excellent social strategies. Join us next month for the November tables and in 2013 for the UK FBCI Quarterly Report. 

Q3 2012 US Facebook Commerce Index

The Q3 Facebook Commerce Index white paper is now available, and big news: Victoria's Secret falls from its top position!  

To be sure, the Victoria's Secret Angels aren't lacking in Likes (the company did grow 2% over the quarter); however, both Target and Walmart have stepped up their game so much this quarter that they blew past Victoria's Secret--growing 17% each.  Full details about the rise of the Big Box stores are included in the white paper. 

 

Not to be outdone, Amazon continued its climb with 57% growth this quarter!  That means that in just six months Amazon has gone from 25th on the top fan count list all the way up to 7th; an impressive climb for the online retailer.  

Dell had some impressive Q3 growth at 152%, much of which surrounded its Dell Festival Tour.  Dell would go to festivals like Lollapalooza and set up the "Dell Live Lounge" where concert-goers could come recharge their batteries both literally and figuratively.  

Read up on all the excitement from Q3 2012 with the Facebook Commerce Index quarterly white paper.  

P.S. For more information on how you can maximize product visibility on Facebook, check out ChannelAdvisor Facebook Campaigns. 

 

September 2012 UK Facebook Commerce Index (UK FBCI)

September’s UK Facebook Commerce Index is here, and the numbers did not disappoint this month! With a number of movers and shakers in our Top 25 and many retailers showing some solid growth on August, we’ve got some great numbers to share. Across September we recorded a month on month increase of 5% - equivalent to 1,449,794 Likes, and many retailers had a very strong September indeed. Not least of all is Amazon, so after months of incredible performance, we’ve decided to dedicate an entire section of our blog to the Marketplaces – eBay and Amazon. We’ll be tracking these two every month and providing an update.

In addition, we also saw a new entry to our Top 25 – something which doesn’t happen very often! Asda jumped to number 23 spot, up from just outside our Top 25 - check out our analysis on its Facebook presence below.

Spotlight on Marketplaces

Since adding them to our Index, eBay and Amazon have both had a very strong impact on our Top 25, demonstrating the strength of their user community and how well this interacts with a social channel such as Facebook. Amazon in particular has had an incredible few months of growth on Facebook, and over September the marketplace added over 393,000 Likes – making them the top grower by number this month once again. Even more excitingly, Amazon jumped into the number 2 position within our Top 25 list, shaking up the top 3 that has held strong for many, many months. Topshop are still holding strong onto that number 1 spot, but with Amazon growing at 24% over September compared to Topshop’s 10%,  it may not be long before Amazon steal its crown. As with every month, we ask what Amazon are doing to drive such growth, and we can seemingly attribute this increase to is a focus on deals (especially the new Lightening Deals), new products and tapping into the hot topics of the moment – such as a timely post promoting the new season of Homeland available for sale on the day of the first episode of Season 2:

 

Not forgetting eBay, September was a very strong month for them as well, increasing Likes by 21% (in fact this performance puts them at number 3 in our top growers chart behind Amazon and Topshop).  eBay also managed to jump up our Top 25 by three places to position 10 this month which is fantastic – driven perhaps by promotion of their new tool “Help Me Shop”, the unveiling of eBay’s new logo, and a £5 voucher for Facebook users.

 

Asda

Asda jumped into our Top 25 this month after adding an impressive 49,000 Likes over the month of September and increasing its overall percentage by 14%. The supermarkets traditionally do well on Facebook (again the sense of community really suits the social nature of a Facebook page) and Asda has really tapped into this, with many of its posts generating hundreds if not thousands of Likes.  One post in particular must have struck a chord with many of Asda’s followers after they cut their price of fuel – generating over 11,000 Likes in response, and nearly 2,500 shares:

As we’ve seen time and time again through our Index, success on Facebook is often determined by connecting with “fans” on a particular topic, and Asda seem to have this really spot on, with personable posts, focusing on very everyday topics such as childhood sweets, Sunday Roasts, the weather and even the Flu jab...all with a sprinkling of the all-important competition of course!

Finally, Asda have impressed us here at ChannelAdvisor with their “Get Cooking” app – a fantastic way to engage users of all ages to encourage them to cook and share recipe ideas.

feelunique.com

Another retailer who had a great September, feelunique.com added 13% more Likes to its total over the month of September, equivalent to just over 5,000 Likes.

feelunique.com has a really fantastic style and approach to its Facebook page; it’s friendly and personable, with a really funky edge to it that suits its product range perfectly.

The team post regular updates on not only exciting new products and offers, but also on fashion/beauty related topics such as London Fashion Week, Q&A’s with make-up artists and beauty brand owners, and regular competitions. Also (and perhaps more importantly), the feelunique.com team is very quick to questions from shoppers, which is great to see and I’m sure gives that extra special element of service.

Screwfix

One of Kingfisher Group’s flagship brands, trade supplier and DIY monolith, Screwfix, sees a healthy 9% rise in fans this month, adding another 5,400 to its Facebook page, and securing 12^th place in our ‘Top Growers’ index for September.

This represents an encouraging rise in fans for Screwfix who, irrespective of still being somewhat off the pace when it comes to the Top 25 in our Index, are certainly honing its skills in engagement – particularly with their photos and commentary aimed firmly at the UK tradespeople!

Be it a cup of tea, full English or imaginative company names for your local handyman, everything’s catered-for in Screwfix’s Fanpage these days…

Sainsbury’s

Seasoned Facebook Index residents, Sainsbury’s, continue its assault on our Top 25 chart, rising one place to 17^th overall. No doubt keeping its eye on young upstarts, Asda, and taking strength from Tesco’s recent share price woes, the grocery retailer also featured in 15^th place in our ‘Top Growers’ index, adding over 17,000 fans to its page (a 3% growth from August).

Engagement seems to be – as ever – high on the agenda for Sainsbury’s, with National Curry Week and Hallowe’en being seasonal and relevant vehicles for soliciting customer feedback and comment.

What is particularly clever with this line of seemingly casual questioning is that Sainsbury’s is constantly gleaning product-related information from potential consumers – most likely with a view to developing and broadening its in-store (and online) offering. This is a great example of direct marketing with a relatively low cost base, and imaginative angle.

It would be interesting to perhaps monitor the fans’ responses to these questions, and conduct your own investigation to see if those particular curries or Hallowe’en outfits ended up your local store!

Pine Solutions/Cotswold Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, a special mention to new entrants in our ‘Top Growers’ Index, the little-known Blackbird Retail Holdings’ twin homewares retailers, These two – separate – brands have been somewhat under the radar for the last couple of years, having concentrated on perfecting their offering, and ensuring that the right people were there to take the businesses to the next level.

Indeed, they’ve certainly done so with respect to our Facebook Index, seeing a 26% and 15% increase in fans over the last month – impressively, whilst the total fan numbers are still relatively low (1,123 and 75 at time of writing), there’s no doubt that competitions have proven an effective way of generating those extra numbers.

We look forward to seeing how these two newbies fare in the coming months! 

August 2012 UK Facebook Commerce Index (UK FBCI)

Another month – another UK Facebook Commerce Index blog! The past few months of the Index have seen some dramatic changes, and August proved to be no exception. An additional 1,777,590 Likes were accumulated by our Top 25 retailers alone, there were 12 changes to the Top 25 chart, and incredibly some retailers added over 80% more Likes to their Facebook pages over the course of the 31 days.

August was all about the Olympics, so we’ll take a closer look to see whether this had an impact on retailer strategies for their social activity, and whether this influenced Facebook users’ behaviour at all over the month.

We’ve called out some retailers with exceptional growth in Likes over August, and we also wanted to mention a couple of retailers who we’ve highlighted in very recent blog posts.

Burton was one of our featured retailers in our July report, and it continued its growth by adding an incredible 87% more Likes to its page this month – equivalent to over 70,000 Likes! Burton remain a little way outside our Top 25 at position 37, but if it continue this pace then it won’t be long before they’re rising up the ranks.

Amazon's Facebook growth seems to be mimicking its overall market growth; there really is no stopping this marketplace giant! Jumping from 7th position to 4th, and growing its fan count by an unbelievable 719,263, it won't be long until we see Amazon causing upset to the top 3 retailers in our chart!

And finally, we should also highlight Topshop who have not only held firm at the top of our Index since we started this blog, but who increased its Likes by just short of 135,000 (5%) over August, which is a fantastic achievement and well up on its nearest competitors – thus cementing their position at the top of our chart.

HMV

Over the month of August HMV added an impressive 16% Likes – over 20,000 – to take its “fan count” on Facebook  over the 150,000 barrier.

HMV by nature of its product range appeals to a wide range of users, perhaps more so than many other retailers out there (where else might you find die-hard heavy metal fans interacting with Justin Bieber teeny-boppers?) and HMV do a really good job of promoting a variety of new products to music lovers, gamers and film-buffs alike. Fans are regularly engaged and shown poster images for new films, preview clips of movies and films, with frequent likes, shares and comments.

Looking then specifically at August, what has driven the increase in Likes? A couple of key events in August spring to mind; festival season and the launch of a number of popular games and films, such as Fifa 13 (to coincide with the start of the new season) and Kick-Ass 2. These themes naturally drive social behaviour as people talk about these events regularly. HMV has a true understanding of its target market, and what discussions they want to be a part of. 

But interestingly, one of the most popular posts from HMV over the month of August was a Music Map that HMV shared – generating over 550 Likes and a number of comments. This is a brilliant example of how a common hobby amongst people can generate engagement and interest with a retailer, without there always having to be a hard sell on a product. 

JD Sports

We had pretty high expectations in August that many retailers, but especially those involved in sport, would be heavily promoting the Olympics and Paralympics Games throughout the month of August, JD Sports certainly lived up to this expectation.

JD Sports did indeed have a strong August, gaining three places in our Top 25 to take them to position 17 (knocking John Lewis down a couple of spots) by adding just shy of 50,000 new Likes – an equivalent 11% increase on the month of July.

Driving this increase however, doesn’t seem to have been the Olympics really at all – although JD Sports did of course comment on the Games in the early part of the month (it couldn’t really be avoided could it?!) and took inspiration from some of the athletes to promote certain products, for example this nice snapshot of Usain Bolt. 

So if it wasn’t the Olympics, what was it driving Likes? This month JD Sports has heavily pushed its Express Your Look competition, a Sky Diving competition and a Be The Face of JD competition to find the next JD Sports model.

We know from monitoring this blog over the last year that competitions are the most popular way to drive Likes, and they certainly seem to be having an impact here.

In addition, JD Sports has done a great job in particular of highlighting the latest trends in footwear to be released, using celebrities (such as the above image of Rita Ora). These generate decent numbers of Likes and regular comments from fans. Whether coincidence or not, footwear really seems to get people talking and is something the JD Sports team regularly feature on their Facebook page (handy as well that these products are often high value and very fashion driven; something that young people in particular will be wanting to share with friends).

It’s a great trend to see actually that many of the traditionally male-dominated brands (this month is no exception as you can see from the retailers we’ve highlighted) are really picking up the pace when it comes to social. The Top 25 is usually dominated by very female fashion oriented retailers, but it’s great to see that retailers with a perceived highly male dominated shopping base are utilising Facebook to interact more and more with customers, and promote their latest trends, competitions and news.

Evans Cycles

We have called out Evans Cycles' performance a few times in the past three months, drawing attention to the fact that this bicycle supplier is great at harnessing sporting events to drive Likes. August was no different; Evans Cycles really embraced the Olympics through regular commentary, pictures and updates on Team GB's cycling team. No doubt it was useful that this team performed particularly well, but these updates really contributed to its 19% growth. For example, a picture of Laura Trott taken with Bradley Wiggins four years ago amassed over 500 likes. 

It should also be noted that Evans Cycles has a great approach towards complaints. Each complaint is answered regularly, each query followed up, and you can see it has an active presence in customer conversations. All in all, we think Evans deserves a gold medal for its August performance!

That is it for this month, August saw some big changes in the Index, and we expect more of the same for September! 

July 2012 ChannelAdvisor Facebook Commerce Index (FBCI)

Note: The ChannelAdvisor Facebook Commerce Index is a new way of tracking Facebook Commerce introduced by ChannelAdvisor in February of 2011.  You can read the background information, schedule, etc. in this introductory post.  

It’s the dog days of summer, and while the heat may be bringing outdoor activity to a halt, online the Facebook Commerce Index is as hot as ever.  Teenagers must be outside enjoying the weather, however, as Aeropostale, Forever 21 and Abercrombie & Fitch each dropped down several positions according to Fan Count.  The only youth apparel retailers that escaped were American Eagle Outfitters and Hot Topic, which held steady at 18 and 25 respectively.  In other July news, we’ll continue to keep an eye on Amazon, which has jumped up another 6 places to #13 overall.  We’ll also take a look at Lancome, which grew 222% this month.

Here’s what we saw from a macro level in growth of the audience across the entire index:

• Growth - The total number of online retailer fans increased by 6% since June.

• Audience - The total fan count jumped from 396m to 420m fans from June to July. This is the aggregate fan count across approximately 500 pages without de-duplication, but indicative of the scale of the Facebook Commerce trends we have all heard anecdotally and are now able to track quantitatively.

Each month we sort data into three different grids: Top 25, Top 25 Growers and Top 25 Percentage Growers. The charts are included below, followed by commentary about what some of the biggest growers did to attract Likes.

Amazon.com

Amazon added some 2.2m new fans last month for 36% growth.  It can thank a video spoof of a fake service called “Amazon Yesterday” for part of this fan count.  Amazon posted the video on its Facebook page with a note saying: “We're loving this video, but haven't quite mastered time travel yet. When we do, Amazon Prime members will be the first to know! Like this post if you love Free Two-Day Shipping.”  Nearly 10,000 people Liked the post, and 873 shared it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ&feature=youtu.be

Another, more unusual tactic that Amazon used in July was a birthday shout-out to Nikola Tesla with a link to several books on the inventor.  The post earned some 9,187 Likes, 888 comments and 1,866 shares.  Amazon doesn’t share sales figures, but we imagine that sales of the Tesla books were up quite a bit too with that level of engagement.  

Lancôme US

Lancôme made a jump of 222% in fan count last month, likely due in part to its joint campaign with Facebook and Pinterest.  They encouraged brides-to-be to pin their dream wedding pictures to their Pinterest boards to win $2,000 in Lancôme swag for the big day.   

One of the most popular series of posts in July was for the launch of Lancôme’s new Hypnose Star mascara.  These social promotions featured Betty Boop as the cover girl in a new video and cover photo, and shared a link to Sephora where Facebook fans could purchase the mascara in advance.  

We’ll see if there are any changes as school starts back up and summer turns into fall, so stay tuned for our next monthly blog post on the FBCI. 

In the meantime, to learn more about how ChannelAdvisor can help you better manage your social strategy, download our Facebook Campaigns data sheet now. 

 

July 2012 UK Facebook Commerce Index (UK FBCI)

July has been another busy month in the UK FBCI, with an additional 1,238,941 fans being added to our Top 25 table alone. This month we saw some dramatic movement once again in our Top 25, caused by just two brands; Amazon and eBay. 

With growth slowing to just 2% for 5 of our top 6 retailers,  Amazon and eBay shook up the Top 25 with an enormous 58% and 47% growth respectively. We are really enjoying tracking these two marketplace giants and comparing and contrasting their Facebook efforts. Amazon jumped up 6 places in just 31 days, and eBay 7 places – moving into 6^th and 13^th positions respectively. This shifted a number of our Top 25 down a place in the middle of the table.

However, not everyone dropped down, with Argos managing to increase a position with an impressive 13% growth over the month of July; from 19^th to 18^th in our table.

Amazon.co.uk

Last month we did a focus piece on Amazon, but it’s well worth pointing out the scale of its growth over July – an increase of over 331,000 fans (that’s equivalent to nearly 11,000 fans per day)!  We pointed out last month that we felt Amazon's increasing social focus was having an impact (which it clearly is); however ,we simply cannot deny Amazon’s growing retail dominance which seems to be spilling over into the social space.

eBay.co.uk

We only relatively recently included eBay in our Facebook Commerce Index, but its impact in our Top 25 is clear to see, and over the month of July eBay added just shy of 200,000 fans.

With so many brands keeping their walls private, eBay has taken the step to allow comments to be posted freely. Unlike so many of the brands who don’t manage this channel effectively from a customer service standpoint, eBay is very effective at answering questions and responding to comments. If on occasion there is negative feedback, eBay responds graciously, in a positive way and with humour.

Not only is eBay responding to posts, it is also busy posting comments of its own – on a variety of topics – such as its self-proclaimed “Summer of Sport” launch and a very topical post on wedding presents, and again, all is done with good humour and fun.

All in all, an excellent job eBay!

Burton

While Burton is some way out of our Top 25, it had a really strong month in July. Burton increased its fan count by 27%, taking its total to over 80,000. Traditionally, our Index is dominated by typically female fashion-focussed brands (even companies such as M&S have a very female-oriented Facebook timeline), Topman being the obvious exception, so it is great to see Burton experience a  nice increase this month.

There is a clear reason for the increase ; Burton ran a huge competition with a chance to meet Amir Khan this month, which was very popular amongst fans. More generally speaking Burton do a really good job at managing its Facebook timeline and engaging fans, with relatively little emphasis on selling and more focus on things like the “Knowledge Blog” which are a great way to showcase products and promotions and start conversations – these do seem to work and are a really nice regular feature.

One particularly popular feature here at ChannelAdvisor for the month of July is the novelty pants feature which was nicely Olympic-themed, as well just before the start of the Games.

WH Smith

One thing that struck us here at ChannelAdvisor when compiling this report is that, whilst WH Smith has snuck into our Top 25 in terms of percentage growth this month with 7% additional fans, we were very surprised to see that such a well-known high street brand has only 2798 fans on Facebook.

So why is this? A look at its page gives a clear indication that WH Smith is not regularly monitoring its Facebook page; its timeline is littered with negative comments and customer complaints.

Further proof that WH Smith does not have a regular team monitoring this page is in the irregularity of the posting over the month of July, and there’s just very little customer engagement encouraged. Even competitions such as the Richard & Judy Book Club giveaway garnered just one fan.

A large brand such as WHSmith could definitely do with putting some effort into its page if they want to use this as a channel in which to grow positive customer feedback and loyalty. We'll keep monitoring in coming months and see if this changes. 

Argos

The other stalwart of the multichannel retail world, Argos, has also refused to be outdone by the cut and thrust of eBay and Amazon’s stride up the ChannelAdvisor Facebook Index, recording an impressive 13% increase (roughly 54,000 fans) in July. This growth results in a climb of one place in the overall rankings and sitting pretty in fifth place in the month’s Top Growers list, with a cumulative fan-count of 483,000.

Argos has long been at the forefront of online customer engagement, convenience retailing and keen pricing, and its Facebook page ensures that those core competencies are well and truly in attendance.

Not only does Argos have links to its new catalogue, discount ranges and the latest Autumn/Winter range (let’s not wish the summer away just yet…!), but one of its biggest coups to date has been to leverage the public’s love of celebrity – Emma Bunton is the face of its children’s clothing range, and there is plenty of evidence of that sprinkled throughout the site.

As usual, competitions rule the roost in terms of garnering extra fans along the way, and Argos has seen the obvious benefits of a golden year for the UK – Queen’s Jubilee, Olympics and all – by launching their ‘Celebrate 2012’ competition - only accessible via an embedded Facebook app.

Chain Reaction Cycles

There’s nothing like a summer of sport to boost a sporting retailer’s profile. Chain Reaction Cycles has been particularly fortunate of late to have not one but two major cycling events in recent weeks help the company push its impressive cycling brand to new limits.

The Tour de France (won, even more conveniently, by a Brit) and the various medals picked up by Team GB in the Olympic Velodrome has certainly been a useful vehicle for this multichannel retailer’s brand and product offering.

Still in 14^th position overall in our Index, Chain Reaction Cycles has nevertheless gained some ground on the leaders, growing by 9% and around 52,000 fans; meaning it is in seventh position in our Top Growers list, a really great effort.

Chain Reaction Cycles also leveraged the local and very real zest amongst the public for the UK’s sporting prowess this July, by publicising local events – including Cornwall’s ‘Festival of Sport’ this coming September.

Coupled with a really responsive and energetic page, this very ‘now’ bicycle-retailing outfit has made the most of current events, and a timely reminder of the powers of social networking if used in the right way. A big thumbs-up to Chain Reaction Cycles this month!

That's all for this month, we've really enjoyed watching eBay and Amazon dominate our charts. We'll be back again next month and will expect to see a lot of Olympic posts after an exciting August in London! 

Q2 2012 ChannelAdvisor Facebook Commerce Index (FBCI)

Our Q2 2012 Facebook Commerce Index report is out…and available here.

Taking a look at retailers’ fan counts over a span of three months gives us a better look at the big picture—what sorts of fan acquisition tactics are sustainable and which are not. During April, May and June the Top 25 retailers shifted around quite a bit—long-standing chart-toppers dropped and new retailers worked their way up from the bottom.

Amazon was one who certainly captured our attention, moving six places from 25^th to 19^th. This 44% growth in fan count is truly impressive and worth further evaluation. Amazon leveraged two Facebook pages to fully engage its fans in a variety of ways.

Next on our watch list was Kohl’s, which jumped around on the Top 25 chart as well, ending up in 15^th place. Kohl’s snagged fans with its numerous promotions and new product offerings. 

In regard to percentage growth, B&H Photo Video Pro Audio increased its fan count by 114% through the use of beautiful images that create a gallery feel on its Facebook page.

See for yourself…download the full Q2 2012 Facebook Commerce Index report to see all the mesmerizing photographs as well as more details on how these retailers and many more built brand awareness last quarter through social media.

For more information on how you can maximize product visibility on Facebook, check out ChannelAdvisor Facebook Campaigns. 

 

 

June 2012 UK Facebook Commerce Index (UK FBCI)

Note: The ChannelAdvisor Facebook Commerce Index is a new way of tracking Facebook Commerce introduced by ChannelAdvisor in the USA in February of 2011. You can read the background information, schedule, etc. in this introductory post. The UK version was launched in May 2011.

June 2012 ChannelAdvisor UK Facebook Commerce Index

June was another busy month in the UK FBCI, from Wimbledon promotions to the Tour De France, not to forget the Euros, our retailers were sports fanatics this month! We saw an addition of 788, 797 throughout our Top 25, an increase of 4%. This month also sees the addition of a new brand to our index, e.l.f cosmetics, and already e.l.f has soared into our Top 25 chart to number 23!

In addition to e.l.f Cosmetics, we’re keeping a close eye on some of our biggest UK brands – New Look are now a mere 7,000 fans behind ASOS, having dramatically closed the gap over the last few months. We can see a big upset on the horizon within the next month or two, with New Look looking likely to steal the number 2 slot away! This month, New Look added 35,000 fans compared to ASOS’ 31,000 so, if New Look can keep this momentum up, we could see it jumping up the table within the next two to three months.

e.l.f

We were keen to find out more about e.l.f Cosmetics, our newest addition to the UK FBCI, so have done a little digging...

e.l.f stands for “eyes lips face”, and came to British shores in 2007 having built up a huge following in the USA since its 2004 launch – its philosophy is to be able to provide the best possible value to its customers without compromising on quality, and the company has built up a celebrity following with fans including Eva Longoria and Alicia Keys.

e.l.f's website screams social, with huge banners promoting its Facebook and Pinterest pages and when you visit its Facebook page it is clear that a lot of time and effort is invested to make this a hub for customers and fans of the brand.

e.l.f's Facebook page contains competitions galore, and many large discounts. One of its more recent competitions was its “Elf On Location” contest, where customers were asked to submit a photo of themselves wearing e.l.f make up . However, by far the most popular tactic to encourage new fans this month was e.l.f's promotional “wheel”, where new incentives are released with the achievement of each "Like" milestone. This is a really interesting promotion, as it’s not often that fans see previews of the “rewards” on the horizon.

It is clear how important Facebook is to e.l.f when you see what an engaging and rewarding Facebook page it has created. This is definitely going to be one to watch – let’s see how quickly it hits the 400K target (and what the incentive will be!)

Amazon

Amazon is definitely a notable performer in this month's table. The marketplace giant has leapt up three positions this month as it continues its phenomenal growth trend. In the past, we’ve profiled Amazon.co.uk in our Index, when we first noticed it was really growing its number of fans, and since then Amazon's growth really has been staggering.  In January this year Amazon sat outside our Top 25; today, not only is it at number 16 in our table, but is also June's top grower by both percentage and number, having added 31% (over 133,000 fans!) over the month of June.

So what is driving this growth?

Amazon’s page is significantly cleaner than when we previously focussed on them, which is great to see, and it’s also fantastic to see much more social engagement than before between Amazon and its customers.

There are more competitions, such as a Kindle prize draw and Aerosmith concert tickets, as well as the regular stream of Deals – and all of this seems to be encouraging more and more Likes.

Boux Avenue

Coming in just behind Amazon this month, with 30% growth over June, is Boux Avenue. Boux Avenue is a lingerie brand from Theo Paphitis, which launched in Spring 2011 and has already launched 11 stores across the UK (and signed up Strictly Come Dancing star Ola Jordan as their face of Summer 2012). Its Facebook page is run by “Miss B” which adds a nice twist, and its timeline and content is strong, with competitions, sale promotions and “hot topics” – such as its spin on Wimbledon.

This is a brand that we will be keeping a close eye on – it might have some way to go before it starts to challenge La Senza for a position in our Top 25 but we’re sure Boux Avenue will be making waves before too long.

Halfords 

High street favourite Halfords has had a really successful month. By taking advantage of the cycling season, Halfords has increased its fan count by nearly 18,000. The Tour de France has been a driving force in Halford's success this month; by following each stage of the Tour – and including detailed reports and insight into the riders and terrain (mountains, time-trials, sprints etc.) – Halfords has cleverly leveraged one of its core product offerings, and coupled that with a Tour de France fantasy game (complete with prizes), and a competition to win a brand new bike.

All this has seen them leap up the Top Growers by % table to number 4. Good work Halfords!

Tesco

The mighty global grocery retailer Tesco continues to put pressure on its competitors. Tesco's Facebook page includes the use of plenty of colour, user-generated content, competitions (across multiple categories) and easy access to customer services. With impressive growth of this month – bringing its total fan count to 839,000 – Tesco remain a leader in our Index in 7^th spot.

Tesco has a really charming and engaging Facebook page. This month its featured posts includes topics such as Wimbledon, Father's Day, football tournaments and the weather! Our favourite post this month was a competition that allowed fans to decide on the design of this year's Tesco Christmas cracker. This competition received almost 14,000 comments and 4, 827 Likes, clearly proving that Tesco has a fantastic understanding of its fan base. 

This 10% increase in fans also sees Tesco tucked in behind Amazon (albeit by a good 20%) as the second-biggest June grower in our Index. What makes this data point all the more impressive is that it represents an increase of nearly 80,000 more fans – that cumulative growth figure puts Tesco head and shoulders above all but the biggest retailers in our Index – the likes of ASOS, Topshop, New Look. 

That's it for the June edition of our UK FBCI. With a new addition to the Index and spectacular growth, this was an exciting month! With the Olympics just around the corner, we are expecting July to be another successful month for UK retailers.  

As always, let us know if you see any interesting promotions or best-practices and we’ll be sure to highlight them in future editions of the UK FBCI.