More than 1,500 retailers, including Adidas Soccer, Golfsmith and Sharper Image, have chosen to open stores on Facebook using the SortPrice Store Application. SortPrice retailers have posed 7.6 million products in 53,000 categories in 2010, the company reported, which is an increase of 60% over 2009.
The greatest majority of products sold on Facebook storefronts built by SortPrice are from apparel retailers, with listings for more than 62,000 products. Women’s jewelry is #2, with more than 37,000 products; and home & garden outlets are selling close to 34,000 products on SortPrice Facebook storefronts.
An increasing number of retailers are realizing the advantages of social storefronts, which are becoming more popular as smartphone user grows exponentially. Facebook reports that more than 200 million of its 500 million members worldwide access the site via mobile devices. Additionally, mobile users are twice as active on the site as users who access Facebook from their home computers.
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Mike Fauscette, an analyst at research firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts has stated that in three to five years, 10% to 15% of total consumer spending in developed countries may go through social networking sites such as Facebook.
Integrating Real-Time Data
With SortPrice, each store’s application is integrated with product data feeds, allowing SortPrice to keep the product information up-to-date and synchronize price changes and new products. Each Facebook store application has an integrated Wishlist which allows Facebook users to save products and share them with friends. The store application also includes many social/viral features, for example user actions are posted on the news feed for their circle of friends to view. Shoppers also can easily share product and gift ideas with their Facebook friends.
SortPrice merchants have access to a control panel for their Facebook store which allows them to customize the look and feel of their stores.
SortPrice was founded in 2004 as a shopping search engine and in 2008 began offering Facebook storefronts.
