Facebook Wants You to Want

Michael Garrity — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:55:00 GMT

Want to hear something cool?

After many months of rumor and speculation, Facebook is finally starting to test a Want button on its site that will allow its one billion users to tag products that they would like to own and save them in individual wish lists that they create. This wish list feature is going to be known as Facebook Collections.

Right now, Facebook is partnering with a handful of retailers, including Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors, Pottery Barn, Smith Optics, Wayfair, Fab.com and Victoria’s Secret, to conduct a beta test of the new features.

Starting a few days ago, an elite group of Facebook users will be able to click a button to save those products that they most desire, although not everyone will be clicking Want buttons. Some of them are seeing “Collect” buttons, while others can use Facebook Collections by just clicking the standard Like buttons on products.

The move seems to be an obvious attempt by the social network to make the site even more e-commerce friendly, likely in an effort to increase advertising revenue from online retailers. They're probably hoping this will increase the profitability of the website to better appease their interested (and maybe slightly disappointed) shareholders.

Despite its very limited test run, Facebook does currently have plans to launch Collections for all of its U.S. users in time.

Here Come the Want Buttons

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:30:00 GMT

Facebook is certainly causing a stir in the digital marketing community with the introduction of Timelines, but that feature is far from the only development of note that has occurred in the past few weeks. The social networking behemoth’s introduction of the Open Graph API has fostered a wave of innovation worthy of attention – particularly as it relates to Internet retailers.

Wanttt.com, for example just introduced its integration into the Facebook Timeline via Open Graph with a feature that enables consumers/shoppers to share the products they want on their Facebook timelines. The benefit for retailers is clear – increased sharing and tracking of buying intent.

Wanttt by itself is rather innovative and the “wanttt” process is pretty simple. Retailers add the “Want” button to the product page of their site with a few lines of code. Shoppers then create Want lists and as products are clicked on and added to those shoppers' lists, inbound links are generated from Wantt.com to the retailers’ product details pages – in theory helping out with SEO via increased links.

Products are also shared on the users Facebook’s timeline, increasing the social footprint of the retailer. The best part is that retailers have the ability to send messages to their “Wanters” and potentially generate some more sales. Wanttt claims six times the conversion rate for email campaigns to Wanters, in fact.

“The Want button has not only increased our social footprint, but it also has improved our exposure to like-minded shoppers, and this context is what makes the Want button stand out,” says Sam Grossman, marketing manager of Sharper Image. “We’ve found that shoppers who create Want lists purchase at a much higher rate and also have a 21 percent higher average order value than our other traffic.”

“Now, with the integration of Want into Facebook’s Timeline, our exposure has increased exponentially,” Grossman continued. “Our shoppers are sharing not just within the Wanttt.com community, but also on Facebook, and we are already seeing benefits from the additional exposure through traffic, sharing and sales.”

Wanttt is far from the only service of its kind, but every now and again it’s interesting to see how software vendors and platforms are leveraging Facebook for the benefit of consumers and themselves.

'Net Features : want buttons

Facebook Wants You to Want

Here Come the Want Buttons