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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

How Top Brands Conduct Ecommerce on Facebook: Best Practices

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:02 PM PDT

Facebook Marketing Bible

Brands can use ecommerce storefront apps to sell products directly from their Facebook Pages. Some apps allow customers to checkout without having to leave Facebook, while others let them complete the transaction on a brand’s website. Brands can direct users away from their Page to a dedicated Facebook canvas app hosting a full-featured store, or they can simply use a Page tab app as a landing page for their website’s store.

Here we’ll showcase how five brands using five reputable apps approach ecommerce on Facebook. We’ll also outline some best practices such as providing buttons for sharing products and Liking your Page, using a compelling landing tab to draw users into your store, and offering a variety of payment methods.

The following is an excerpt. The full length article, available in our Facebook Marketing Bible, includes analysis of four more Facebook ecommerce implementations and additional best practices.

The Miami HEAT via Milyoni

Page: The Miami HEAT NBA basketball team

Storefront App Provider: Milyoni

Tab App Name: Shop

Home Page: The Miami HEAT uses a landing page to display some of it top products and draw people to click through to its canvas app. Once the full featured app has loaded, users can search products, browse a catalog, Like the Miami HEAT’s Page, or follow the team on Twitter. The center of the app provides a promotion code for use at checkout, and several featured products, though without sharing buttons.

Product View: Clicking through to a product reveal multiple photos, options to share via email, Facebook, and Twitter, and a Like button that allows for quick sharing to the news feed, and that displays a Like count which can provide social proof for the quality of products.

Checkout: A checkout powered by Verisign lets users complete their order within Facebook using their credit card.

Negatives: The app may be too full-featured for merchants only selling a few items and who are more concerned with driving sales than follows of their social media presences. Sharing buttons on the home page could help, but might make the app even more cluttered.

Overall: Milyoni’s app provides a great shopping experience that’s entirely contained within Facebook. The Miami HEAT did well to provide a compelling landing page that can persuade users to wait for the canvas app to load. Using the home page to drive valuable Likes and follows of a brand’s social media presence while using the product pages to drive sales strikes a good balance.

Five Best Practices

1.  Sharing Options on Products – Placing Like buttons on the home page view of your products, and additional email, Twitter, and Facebook sharing options on product pages makes it easy for users to tell friends about items they find interesting, even if they don’t buy them. These shares drive referral sales, and represent the primary advantage of conducting Facebook-integrated ecommerce.

The full article, complete with more best practices and reviews of ecommerce implementations, can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's complete guide to marketing, advertising, and ecommerce on Facebook.

Facebook for iPhone 3.4.3 Can Display Menu in Landscape Mode to Its 45 Million Daily Users

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 11:19 AM PDT

Facebook released v3.4.3 of its Facebook for iPhone native mobile app yesterday. Though the release notes only list “Various bug fixes” and “Improved security”, we’ve discovered the update permits users to view the navigation menu in landscape mode. As many of the app’s features could already run in landscape mode, this allows for a more unified experience.

Despite few tangible improvements in versions 3.4.2 or 3.4.3, Facebook for iPhone is still the most advanced of Facebook’s native mobile apps, boasting some features lacking in the latest version of Facebook for Android. Event checkins, a Places map, and Find Friends were all added in the 3.4 and 3.4.1 updates. The app also recently began pulling the news feed from m.facebook.com, streamlining development for Facebook’s mobile team.

This month also saw the leak of screenshots and documentation of a new Facebook mobile photos app for iOS, which could be integrated into Facebook for iPhone or released as a standalone app. That app might allow for multi-shot sharing, filters, video support, and an activity feed.

The Facebook for iPhone continued steady growth through June, gaining 2.79 million daily active users to reach 45.2 million DAU, and gaining 4.3 million monthly active users reach a massive 80.7 million MAU. These stats, from our application growth tracking service AppData, make Facebook for iPhone the largest Facebook app by DAU, and the second largest by MAU to Zynga’s CityVille.

With Facebook for iPhone 3.4.1, users can now turn their phone horizontally to switch the navigation menu to landscape mode. This might make it easier for those using the app while laying on their side, or who use the app’s features in landscape mode and don’t want to switch to portrait mode when navigating between features. And, by bringing landscape navigation to the iPhone app, Facebook also sets itself up to offer a more unified interface experience with its forthcoming iPad app (many people prefer using their tablets in landscape mode).

For the time being, though, one downside we’ve found is that users can’t access the Account menu or add bookmarks in landscape mode.

Overall, Facebook has said that it is focused on both native apps and its mobile web site, and it is working on an HTML5 version that could offer many of the multimedia features available for native apps.

The booming popularity of all of its mobile services, though, means it has its hands full adding new features for its demanding users. Users on the comments thread of the announcement are requesting the ability to tag friends in status updates as users can on Facebook for Android, and the option to Like comments.

Expect Facebook to continue upping its mobile focus as it faces a broad range of mobile competitors.

Facebook Careers Postings: Finance, Communications, Brazil, Singapore and More

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 09:22 AM PDT

Facebook began a search for a Head of Finance in its Brazil office, as well as a Head of Marketing Communications for Norther America. Other jobs posted to the company’s Careers Page and LinkedIn feed include account management, technical positions, business jobs, and attorneys across its United States, Singapore and Dublin, Ireland offices.

Posts added this week on Facebook's Careers Page:

  • Head of Finance Operations (Sao Paulo)
  • Head of Marketing Communications – North America
  • Marketing Communications Manager
  • Monetization Product Marketing – Sales and Marketing Solutions
  • Recruiting Lead – Engineering – Palo Alto
  • Manager, Applications
  • Manager, ERP
  • Oracle Applications DBA
  • Business Analyst, Hyperion
  • Product Manager, Tax Technology
  • Corporate Communications Coordinator, Internal Communications (contract)
  • Corporate Finance Associate
  • Director, Accounting 1106003 (Menlo Park, CA)
  • International Payroll Lead (Dublin)
  • Manager, Global Supplier Management
  • Technical Program Manager
  • Account Manager – Spanish (Dublin)
  • Commerce Manager (Palo Alto)
  • Analyst, Measurement Solutions (New York)
  • Front End Engineer, Infrastructure
  • Software Engineer 1106004

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook Hires and Departures: Hong Kong, Recruiting, IP, Interns, Data Centers and More

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 09:13 AM PDT

Facebook continued to hire its interns this week, as we saw from the company’s LinkedIn feed, and according to its Careers Page, recruiting, sales, business and analyst operations were being hired, along with data center staff.

New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:

  • Dereck Quock, Application Engineer – formerly a student.
  • Kelsey Silver, Office Manager – formerly an Executive Assistant to CEO at Royale Security.
  • Brendan Cleary, Network Engineer – formerly a Senior Network Engineer at Pocket Kings.
  • Timothy Hawkins, Manager of Data Center Facility Operations – formerly did similar work for the U.S. Navy.
  • Ian Jablonowski, User Interface Engineering Intern.
  • Kara Wilburn, Legal Intern – formerly a Senior Operations Manager at JiWire.
  • Kimeya Afshar, HR Coordinator.
  • Zachary Triplett, Analyst User Operations – previously a legislative aide for Sen. Kevin Eltife in Texas.
  • Brice Chalopet, Inside Sales Associate – previously worked as the Head of marketing and Business Development at NEWNET3D.
  • Alex Wyler, Engineering Intern – formerly performed similar work at U Connect LLC.
  • Nidhi Manchikanti, Recruiting Coordinator.
  • David Forster, Recruiting – formerly worked in talent acquisition at RMS.
  • Sonya Beach, PHR, Human Resources – previously did similar work for Lucasfilm.
  • Alessandro Jorge, MBA Summer Intern – former Business Analyst at Neuding Strategic Consulting.
  • Stefano Tuveri, MBA Intern – formerly worked as a Consultant for Accenture.
  • Kevin Bennett, Intern – former Business Development Consultant at Banyan Water.
  • Sean Quinlan, Developer Support Intern – formerly did similar work as an intern at CDM Technologies.
  • Jessica Jenks, Monetization Product Marketing MBA Intern – former Manager of Production & User Experience at Vantage Media.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

  • Partner Engineer – Mobile (Hong Kong)
  • Communications Manager (France)
  • People Services Representative – Contractor
  • Engineering Recruiting Lead
  • Recruiter – Contract – Non Tech
  • Recruiting Manager, Austin Texas
  • Technical Recruiting Lead – Palo Alto
  • University Recruiter, Creative (Product Design, User Experience)
  • Business Analyst, Hyperion
  • Product Manager, Tax Technology
  • Law Enforcement Response Analyst, French (Dublin) – Contract
  • Security & Incident Response Investigator (Dublin) – Contract
  • Executive Assistant D.C.
  • Business Operations Associate (Dublin)
  • Business Operations Associate – Payments & Risk
  • Director, Global Supplier Management
  • Group Technical Program Manager
  • Data Center Technician (NC)
  • Manager, Datacenter Facilities Operations (OR)
  • National Sales Operations Manager
  • Director, DSO Ad Operations (Dublin)
  • Associate, Global Sales Development (London)
  • National Sales Operations Manager
  • Analyst, Platform Operations (Hyderabad)
  • Intellectual Property Specialist, User Operations (Austin)
  • Legal Support Analyst, User Operations (New Grad) (Austin)
  • Intellectual Property Specialist, User Operations (Austin)
  • Legal Support Analyst, User Operations (New Grad) (Austin)
  • Agency Marketing Manager (New York)
  • Measurement Researcher (Palo Alto)
  • Strategic Partner Development, Entertainment

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

fredag den 1. juli 2011 at 07.10