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.

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