Presentation: Social Commerce Teardown – How Heels.com Deploys Social Commerce

Here’s the presentation from last week’s Strands Recommender (social recommendation engine for e-commerce) webinar on social commerce, “Going Social: Creating A Social Shopping Strategy That Boosts Sales & Connects With Your Customers” featuring a teardown of the Heels.com deployment of social commerce.

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Presented by  Suleika Bloom (Social Media Director, Heels.com), along with Trevor Legwinski (Strands’ Marketing Director), Sucharita Mulpuri (VP Forrester), the webinar – with sound can also be viewed here (although it’s on the buggy instantpresenter app which triggers slow flash script warnings, and frequently freezes).

But in a nutshell the Heels.com social commerce strategy consists of the following:

Heels.com Social Commerce Strategy

Offsite:

Facebook

• To showcase products and solicit comments (fans who comment on Heels.com Facebook page have a $ value 400% more than those that don’t)
• Alvenda‘s Facebook wall store to sell directly from users’ walls
• Custom Facebook application (Shoes! Virtual Dream Shoe Closet) – 20K active users

Twitter

• Newsfeeds @highheels, @heels_girl
• Dealfeed @heeldeals

YouTube

• Heels TV Channel – previews, scoops, shows

Social Shopping Portals

• Contests e.g Paris Hiton contest on Polyvore

Other

• Presence on Flickr, LinkedIn, Wishpot (wishlists), and Formspring (feedback, service)

Onsite:

• Facebook social plugins (e.g. Like button)
• Personalized Recommendations (Strands Recommender)
• Customer Ratings & Reviews (Rate Voice, Strands Recommender)
• Video section (Heels TV) (Video Showcase of Shoes -> 10% less returns, drives traffic, viral – get embedded)
• Use company blogs (high.heels.com, heelsandthequeencity.com
• (Other) Vee24 – video chat based live customer service

Top takeouts from Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuri- who prefaced the Heels.com content with some useful market analysis:

• Social media marketing accounts for 1-5% of digital marketing budget – with ratings and reviews, blogs (micro- and regular blogs), and social recommendations seen by Forrester’ panel of 1,500 marketing and strategy professionals as the top ranked social media marketing solutions
• Forrester suggest that the biggest benefit of social is listening; don’t expect huge, easily quantifiable ROI