Retailers Shut Facebook Storefonts Amid Apathy | Hacker News Reader

Retailers Shut Facebook Storefonts Amid Apathy

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79 pointsmikek58 comments

The problem is that Facebook is a pain to navigate. If I wanted to shop for something online, the last place that I would go to would be Facebook - and even if I did choose to go to Facebook I wouldn't even know where to go or what to click on. A lot of those company pages have a spammy feel to them and when you like a brand they pollute your news feed.

The Facebook design has zero familiarity to it. I have been using the site for over 5 years now, at least once a week, and yet I have zero familiarity with the product. When I click on a link in Facebook, I have no idea what is really going to happen. I have written blog posts and popular guides on Facebook yet when I am helping others secure their accounts I find myself just clicking and guessing. It would definitely be in the top 5 products that I have used in the last 5 years yet it is the only popular product that I can't navigate blindly.

The menu's are starting to remind me of the toolbar hell of later Microsoft Office versions (a reason why a lot of power users are hesitant to upgrade Office).

I think Facebook really need to streamline their design, separate brands from real friends in the news feed and sit down and work out how they can expose deeper functionality of the platform to users without just throwing dozens of links into the interface. When you have personal pictures from friends mixed in with brand messages users are more likely to feel that their privacy is being violated.

Edit: to add, this is why I think Facebook isn't as secure in popularity as many analysts would have you believe. Pinterest is an example of a real threat to Facebook - a site that was designed with social and e-commerce ingrained in the product with an easy to use interface. That is a billion-dollar opportunity to Facebook is about to miss out on.

Edit 2: My attempt to shop on Facebook:

https://img.skitch.com/20120219-nd4peencu2b7kf9534juhb1ytc.j...

vs my attempt on Pinterest:

https://img.skitch.com/20120219-fjyq53h693eb4fnfitamgsmuc5.j...

Your comment reminded me of when I used to work at Circuit City. One week, they decided to run a promotion: you would go to the Circuit City website, pick out and customize a computer. Then, you would print out a sheet with your order number on it, and go to the store to pay for it.

It was painfully obvious to me at the time that this was probably the brainchild of some young gun marketer at HQ. "Here's the deal," I imagine him saying. "People that shop at our on-line store don't go home with as many accessories and don't purchase extended warrantees as often as our in store customers. So, we'll make sure they have to go in the store. Then we can up-sell the crap out of them! It's flawless!"

Later on, I worked at the Apple Store. I once had a customer come in who was trying to decide between a MacBook and some low-end model of HP. I went through everything that she would get with the MacBook that she wouldn't get with the HP, and one after the other she informed me that she wasn't all that enticed by the difference. When we finished she told me, "I think I should get the HP."

"Yeah," I replied, "that's probably the right choice for you at this point. If you need another computer in the future, though, don't forget about us." The customer was stunned. She wanted to know why I wasn't pushing her toward the Mac. "Simple," I said, "we want you to buy an Apple because it's the best product for you, not because some pushy sales-person badgered you into a sale."

One of those companies is gone, one is the most valuable company in the world. Marketing on Facebook, to me, has always felt much more like Circuit City's strategy, and almost never like Apple's.

I can say that in my experience this is true in Apple stores. The last MBP I bought I had to buy in store to get a certain discount. The sales person at the store actually went through my various usage scenarios to see if there was a cheaper option for my needs. Not often that happens in a sales scenario.

On the flip side, my last experience with the Apple Store and it's sales staff left me hating the entire experience. Suffice it to say, you can't walk and buy something knowing what you want. You are forced to wait for some sales person. More than a half hour into the experience, we simply left. My brother-in-law was sitting there, ready to buy. He knew exactly what he wanted. We left, and he never made the purchase.

So, when I read things like this, all I see is a sales person who just wasted another customers time. Sure, it's policies, and you are spending that time with a potential customer, and treating them well. The point, however, is I've had better experiences buying Apple products from places like FutureShop, where I can walk in, explain what I want, pay, and walk out in less than 5 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure for the majority of people this is... fine (I guess). I mean, making an appointment to buy something is natural.

But yeah, I avoid the Apple store now. Between that, and numerous other things, it's at best a frustrating experience.

I had exactly the opposite experience last 2 times I was there - in one case a couple of years ago, I got an AppleTV... I straight-up said I was not interested in anything else, just that, I got a sales rep in about 2 minutes, then joked with him for another minute about how awesome Netflix on the aTV was. Paid, then I walked out without a bag or paper receipt.

More recently, with Apple's improved "self-checkout", I simply scanned the item on my iPhone app and pay with my AppleID. Again, no receipt, no bag.

I challenge you to find a more geek-friendly checkout mechanism. YMMV of course, but I've gotten really good mileage at my local Apple store.

The experience is different for things that are stocked on the shelf. Having to wait for a sales rep to be finished (regardless of other employees standing around) to purchase a computer is... well, described in my parent post.

Not to take this thread further off-topic, but I'm curious why your brother-in-law and yourself don't just order from your computer instead of making a trip to the store?

He's Canadian. To make the purchase, he'd have to purchase from Apple.ca, where prices are much more expensive, not to mention the tax rate for Quebec (which I think is up to 18% now). Anyways, while visiting, we were going to pass by the store one day, and decided to make the stop.

Fair enough. However, it sounds like you overestimate the experience at other retailers. Waiting in checkout lines is also a bottleneck where one grabs the product off-the-shelf. Lines are typical in popular stores.

For example, a few days before Xmas I spilled beer on my keyboard and had to get a new one ASAP. I drove down to BestBuy, walked back to where all the keyboards were on display, and quickly scanned the shelves. I prefer wired to wireless for the desktop, and quickly found there were only 2 (out of ~15) wired models. They were gaming-oriented with all sorts of cruft, costing ~$80. I glanced around, noticed the Apple product area, walked over and found a simple Apple wired keyboard for $50 (I don't even own a Mac). I spent the next 20min in the checkout line, where the cashier tried to get me to signup for some program(s) of theirs. Not a pleasant experience either.

For purchases like a new MacBook or iMac, I generally prefer to purchase them in-store, for a few reasons:

1) Save money on shipping 2) Get the item quicker 3) If there isn't someone in your household who is home during the day, having big/expensive things delivered to you is usually a huge pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, the Apple Stores (at least the ones I've been in) aren't really optimized for someone who knows exactly what they want and wants to get in and out as quickly as possible. Every time I've been in there to buy a computer, the experience has been really frustrating, as I have to wait forever for someone to help me, then they have to spend time tracking down someone who can go get the actual computer.

Obviously the model they use is working out incredibly well for them, I just wish they'd make it a little easier to actually buy stuff.

This is extremely surprising to hear. I have never been to an Apple store (100+ visits to 2 dozens stores) where I could imagine this happening.

I don't think you mean that (or if you do, you aren't really trying). It's easy to imagine how the Apple Stores model breaks down. Just imagine a busy day, with a dozen people in before you waiting on sales reps who are all busy. A large number of these people have countless questions. Imagine if a sales rep spent just 15 minutes with each customer, answering questions.

Either way, whether you could imagine it or not, it happened. I'm not here to just bash Apple, either. The Apple Store is a different experience. But, it's not optimized for people that know what they want. If I want to buy an Apple product, I get better experience going to other stores. If I want to socialize and discuss how awesome Apple products are, then yeah, the Apple Store is a great place to go.

Want (the startup I work for) is just like Pinterest and we are allowing a community discover and share things that want or like. The difference is that we are solely products. We just rolled out a feature this week that auto-generates store fronts for merchants based upon things that community likes from that store.

http://wanttt.com/

http://wanttt.com/w/merchant/store/298/?products

Change that name as soon as you can.

I can imagine all the justifications you might have for triplicating the T, but it's not going to stick.

Consumers have demonstrated for a very long stretch of time their dislike of difficult variations of words. Is that two T's or four T's again?

www.wantt.com goes nowhere; and www.wantttt.com redirects to wantist.com. You've got a big problem right there.

I assume you guys are the ones out of Michigan holding the trademark on "want" - but if you're going to keep that name, you should go hustle digimedia and trade your soul to get want.com

It's a crowded space: http://want.it/

Very crowded: http://shopcastr.com/

Shopcastr's focussed on Toronto right now; I work in the same office they do for a different startup.

Part of the reason that it has zero familiarity is that it changes so often that memorizing a "path" through Facebook to a place you like to go is totally pointless. In fact, the constant change is the whole point of Facebook. The default page when you log on is your news feed, so even when the site itself isn't changing, the content is.

It's like trying to remember how to navigate through this: http://images.funagain.com/photo1/huge/00069.jpg

I never understood why companies ever thought I want to be a fan of my favorite mop or cheese grater.

The real effect of all of this has been to get Facebook mentioned on television and radio many times per hour at no cost to Facebook.

I think that Like Us sticker on your mop has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the mop company employee who implemented it and their relationship to their boss. "We're on Facebook!"

I agree 100%. It makes no sense other than internal positioning. Great point.

I'm surprised, when I do go to the page, just how many people actually do like their mop of cheese grater.

Tropicana has had "like us on fb" on their cartons for years now, they currently have 185K fans: http://www.facebook.com/Tropicana

According to their 2010 annual report, Tropicana had $6 billion in annual worldwide sales, so probably 3 billion units, so 185K fans is pretty dismal.

Many people probably have no immediate interest in becoming a fan of their favorite mop. However, given the overall user volume and degree by which users are encouraged to participate in such information sharing activities without any obvious downside, even mid-sized brands seem to have a fair number of fans. It also probably helps that nearly every FB contest requires that users fan the brand these days. ;)

Anyway, I think there's something about having people you trust and/or admire (friends, celebrities) publicly depicting their interest in a brand. It almost seems like a means to lower the barrier for a kind of "automated word-of-mouth" advertising. Besides, clicking to a brand fan page without leaving the comfortable and relatively familiar neighborhood of facebook's interface is awfully easy.

Now, how that actually plays out when applied to marketing & sales? I don't know. Can't say I recall Facebook influencing my purchasing habits in some manner, but who knows. Perhaps I might subconsciously choose brand A over B due to how frequently A showed up in my feed when dealing with a product when I would otherwise not have any strong feelings in either direction. Or more importantly, perhaps by becoming a fan of a brand/product/whatever, suddenly I've become a qualified lead for future marketing purposes in the eyes of that brand.

In general it seems like the Facebook allure has at least some to do with being a part of the next big thing. There's a certain degree of cool and relevance by association that comes with being on Facebook, much like brands were once pushing their MySpace pages in a similar manner---although perhaps with less fervor back then.

The barrier to entry is just so bloody minimal in trying out new sites like Facebook that I'd imagine for many it's worth the implementation costs to at least see how things play out. That being said, it's interesting that brands have been using valuable marketing dollars to promote their facebook pages instead of properties which they actually own and have complete control over. Whether we're talking print ads or television commercials, I recall having seen a fair number of references to facebook.com/brand while completely leaving out www.brand.com. It's rather interesting... and like you indicated, these brands are basically promoting facebook in the process.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who has never actually seen a "Facebook store". Here's what appears to be a moderately good list of some "popular" stores:

http://socialcommercetoday.com/top-50-facebook-stores-top-20...

From what I can tell from the first few, it's not really much more than a very basic third-party e-commerce platform squeezed into Facebooks frame.

Am I missing something? Why would a major retail brand want to downgrade the shopping experience to this when they can simply link through to their existing store front with their own brand experience, tracking, metrics, promotions and upsells? It seems baffling that any company would be content to squeeze their store into Facebook's 500 pixel-wide frame.

IMHO, this proves (yet again) how difficult it is to monetize social networks and I think it's a commentary on the long-term viability of facebook – if nothing else, as the article mentions briefly, it's a crack in the high-value facade that FB and its early investors have tried so hard to build.

I guess it's an open question as to just how much of the network's would-be value can be wrung out of it by facebook – but doing so is a dangerous game for them. On the one hand, if you exploit your users too much or too invasively, you'll see a huge uproar and pushback. On the other, if you can't produce results for customers (retailers, etc.), then the perceived value of your product goes down significantly.

edit: Ah, yes, the non-communicative downvote. Please, if you disagree with me then by all means, say so. Downvoting does little to build any sort of higher intellectual exchange. If I'm wrong, I'd love to be told why... it might even spur a good conversation.

"On the one hand, if you exploit your users too much or too invasively, you'll see a huge uproar and pushback. On the other, if you can't produce results for customers (retailers, etc.), then the perceived value of your product goes down significantly."

I was thinking about this recently, in the context of Target and its use of statistics to get ads for baby products to people who they calculate are pregnant, and in the more general context of gmail et al. and ads based on email content.

There's probably a Laffer Curve kind of relationship between number of ads served (taxes) and the amount of views/visit/use (work). Serve more ads and your revenue goes up, to a point. Serve to many ads, and your revenue goes down, because people view/use/work less.

Still trying to work out how the Trickle Down theory manifests online.

I wouldn't shop on Facebook, for a few reasons.

One - I don't trust them... At some point they will do "beacon" or something similar again.

Two - Facebook will eventually either make you use FB gift cards or make a cut from the retailer. Either way, it will cost more.

Three - If I want a pair of khakis from the Gap, I can type "gap.com"... Or go down the Facebook navigation rabbit hole, which changes several times per year.

The only thing that makes sense to me for Facebook commerce is marketing at people who don't have access to credit cards, or at people whose only internet access is Facebook via feature phones.

> Three - If I want a pair of khakis from the Gap, I can type "gap.com"... Or go down the Facebook navigation rabbit hole, which changes several times per year.

1999: AOL Keyword: GAP

2012: Facebook.com/GAP

@GAP

I think you nailed it with 3. A constantly changing UI makes people hesitant to submit their credit cards. Whereas Amazon has looked pretty much the same for twenty years.

I never knew Facebook was trying to cover this segment of the web presence, but if I did, I would have imagined them forcing some kind of fee on storeowners like they do with mandatory credits for apps/games. Given that there were no apparent barriers like that for F-store operations, it's quite interesting to learn that people didn't use them. I can imagine three issues:

- buyers just didn't know about this.

- people want a more private experience when buying online. Not so much "trying to sell to people in a bar" as "people don't want to shop when it feels that everyone is looking".

- buyers are more and more using mobile, and Facebook is still trying to figure out how to integrate 3rd parties into their mobile experience.

Given the patterns of behaviour of Facebook users, I can't really believe any of the three, which leaves me confused.

Oh, and F-Commerce is a funny term.

I'm not sure it's something Facebook is necessarily pushing. I think it's just businesses squeezing e-commerce pages into Facebook page tabs.

I think a lot of folks still don't notice the custom page tabs. They "like" something and they see the items that get dumped into their stream as a result or they occasionally go to the "wall" for that thing, and just don't see the links in the sidebar to the custom pages.

Even if the company sets it as the default tab for their page, once the user has "liked" the page, the default changes to the wall.

I think it's because Facebook isn't officially enabling and supporting e-commerce that it's not working out well.

My startup operates in this space (http://venpop.com) and we see this kind of thing all the time. One of the biggest problems is that the hype of Social Commerce has driven large, big-name players to make large, big-dollar bets on the space. They'll wind up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a fancy storefront, and they have no chance of making their money back.

So, they shut them down... and it's giving the whole industry a bad name (via articles like this) because of over-execution against unjustifiable expectations.

Stores are making money on direct sales, but they're not raking it in. They're doing a lot more by staying in touch with their customers, offering them deals, and ensuring they stay top-of-mind throughout the year with their likely holiday buyers. But, some retailers were determined to turn Facebook into a Point of Sale destination... and they're so insistent on seeing returns on the social "channel" that they'll actually start putting up links and promotions to drive people to Facebook instead of their own website. It's pretty irrational.

A few months ago our CEO also did an interview where he talked about what a bad idea this was as well: http://allthingsd.com/20110822/venpop-makes-a-case-against-a...

You know those cardboard compacter/bailer units in the back of Home Depots and such? The shelving crew puts their cardboard into them, it gets crushed and comes out in neat, baled bundles.

I saw a truck version of one of them. It drives to your location and you or they bale your cardboard.

It had a Facebook "Like Us" sticker on the side.

Seriously? For something you'll probably only need once, and probably didn't even know existed before you needed it?

Marketers don't want to miss the bus so they jump on every bandwagon.

To drive home their message.

I need to buy shoes on Facebook like I need to share photos with other shoppers at the mall.

If you want people to shop on FB you have to integrate it with the apathetic zero-effort social climbing. That means luxury goods only.

Allow opt-ins that allow for ads like: so and so just bought an Omega watch and is therefore clearly better than you!

Efforts in this direction were sidetracked by the Sharper Image(??) vibrator fiasco a couple years back. Opt-ins are very very important.

Finally, the other option is to plug-in a Pinterest model into a FB app. Or better yet piggyback onto Pinterest, replace affiliate links again, and let the litigation fly! (I have a gut feeling that a dozen projects like this must already exist.)

"piggyback onto Pinterest, replace affiliate links again, and let the litigation fly! (I have a gut feeling that a dozen projects like this must already exist.)"

Can you clarify what you mean by this? Specifically 'replace affiliate links again'

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/17/pinsanity/

Syndicate pinterest content to FB, and change pinterest affiliate tag to Facebook's. Basically out-pinterest pinterest.

Facts: a few companies have failed to monetize facebook store fronts, so they quit investing resources in them.

Conclusion: Facebook isn't a commerce platform that can succeed.

Facebook works for commerce. Most people just haven't figured out how yet.

It seems that some companies like Payvment and Tabjuice have had some success getting brands to buy in and use their platforms to sell to fans...but again it just seems like fans are not interested in buying through Facebook. It might just be an undeveloped technology, or its too soon to tell, maybe it will reemerge as something different in the coming years. Also, consumers are probably skeptical about buying through a social network for actual goods, much the same way consumers were a bit reluctant to share their credit card online in the early days of the internet.

I wonder how the Facebook movie rentals thing is going... I think Facebook's ultimate destiny is as an aggregator, sending people to more niche/targeted sites.

My gut reaction to this is that it might be that overtly trying to sell stuff of Facebook reminds users of the negative vibe that surrounds Facebook. It sort of proves that Facebook is more about gathering profile data to make effective targeted sales, rather then a social network tool.

The whole idea of shopping on Facebook was ridiculous from the beginning. But I think Facebook understands this and is now taking itself to the stores. Nik's post on the matter is a good read although he repeats the absurd Atlantic revenue projections for Pinterest.

Interesting. I'm rolling out and testing a tool that lets restaurants create and sell their own Groupon-like daily deals from their Facebook page (using their own Stripe acct).

Maybe it won't work ... we'll see

Sounds interesting. One thing to consider is that part of groupons pitch is that they will drive customers that don't know about the business to the business. Don't give up, but do think of a way to get that function as part of your value prop.

Yes, it's true that some brands have failed on Facebook- but to write off the entire concept is overreaching. The problem, to date, hasn't been with technology but with merchandising. Brands need to figure out the correct mix of merchandising and marketing before they will be successful. Too many retailers have just been vomiting up their entire catalog and that's what what the consumer wants on Facebook.

Facebook will always remain a secondary or tertiary revenue stream for brands, but there is money to be made in that space.

Wait, facebook has stores? :P

Wow I didnt even know facebook had stores.

Analysts are amusing at times. So they speculated not that long ago that Facebook was going to challenge Amazon.com as a retail destination? On what planet was this going to happen?

Sure, and Amazon.com was going to challenge Google (A9!), and Amazon was going to challenge eBay in auctions, and Google was going to challenge PayPal (Google checkout!) and Microsoft was going to challenge Google (Bing!) and Microsoft was going to challenge Intuit (Money!) and Microsoft was going to challenge Oracle (SQL Server, Great Plains) and Facebook was going to kill Twitter, and Microsoft was going to kill AOL with MSN, and and and and.

Who knew it's apparently so difficult to conquer the entire planet? Next you're going to tell me that people don't want their car oil changed by McDonald's.

You shouldn't need a marketing guru to know about the basics of positioning and branding. Facebook is trying to be everything to everybody. They're not going to succeed - not because they're not good at this or that, but because you just CAN'T be the best at everything in the mind of your customers. Like shingen said, people aren't going to want their car oil changed at McDonald's - not if they have a choice.

Line extension is a tricky business. The good news is: this opens up a lot of opportunities for startups.

Walmart is very nearly everything to a lot of people. People do get oil changes, fast food, haircuts, furniture, household goods, food, banking, prescriptions, movies, games, sporting goods, gardening supplies... The list goes on. Convenience trumps almost anything.

And yet Walmart doesn't dominate haircuts at all, America is filled with a network of 20,000 hair salons that outsell the hair salons in Walmart. People usually have to schedule appointments with their hair salon - that is not maximum convenience, it's maximum value. There are more banks outside of Walmart than inside of Walmart, and that will continue to be the case. Walmart is an extremely small part of the US furniture market. And so on.

Walmart wanted to take over the gasoline fill-up market. What could be more convenient? Instead, gas stations have thrived living near Walmart, because convenience doesn't always maximize value. Gas stations draw people with gasoline, and make money on in-store purchases; that model didn't work for Walmart, because gasoline doesn't draw people to spend an hour shopping at Walmart, so the value-add was non-existent.

The notion of extreme convenience fails as often as it succeeds in my opinion. It's why Walmart doesn't own every category. It's why GameStop exists. Specialization can just as easily trump maximum convenience, you have to offer enough of a value proposition. It's why Starbucks and Apple Stores exist; it's also why dollar stores are thriving. It's why Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme exist despite Walmart selling donuts.

Obviously Walmart doesn't manufacture the drugs in the prescriptions; they don't have a banking license; they don't make movies or games; they don't cut your hair; they don't run the food franchises (eg Subway); they don't make furniture; they don't make the groceries.

Walmart is merely a retailer, and with their physical space they sometimes act like a mini mall. They don't even own their shipping network any longer. That is not Walmart being everything to everybody. Quite the opposite, they're admitting they can't be, so they let other companies ride their coattails to optimize their sales per square foot.

Uh ok. I didn't say Walmart dominated haircuts in the US. I didn't say Walmart dominated gasoline. I didn't say Walmart dominated donuts. I didn't say Walmart manufactures their own drugs or operates as a bank or directly employs the barbers there.

What I said was that for a lot of people, Walmart is where they go for nearly everything. There are a lot of places in small town America where a Walmart moved in and a lot of the existing local retail and service businesses shut down. It doesn't have much to do with positioning or branding. It's just really easy to get everything done there.

The point is, it's possible. If Walmart can do it, maybe Facebook can too.

FB doesn't drive commerce? Tell that to Zynga.

That's a pretty one dimensional definition of "commerce"; Zynga's product was designed for the Facebook platform. The key thing is this:

>"A year ago, investors hailed so-called F-commerce as the next big thing, speculating that the company had potential to threaten Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and PayPal Inc."

Facebook is going public. They passed 500MM users two years ago. Everyone and their grandmother, literally, knows what it is. So where are these stores that are part of the next big thing? Can anyone name one e-store that's built around Facebook?

You'd think it'd be here by now. The tech business cycle peak is coming to an end...so where is it?

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