1. social commerce sites typically have a fraction of the conversion rates to normal e-commerce sites. e-mail re-engagement is very effective for return visits. even a simple best of the week gets high open/click through rates. I do agree with you right off the bat is not ideal. However, given the space I play in, I cannot be in the etsy transaction phase to get sign ups --> see fancy (they now have 10m users - what is your opinion of their strategy)? when i showed the first click through page for 10 seconds , my bounce rate dropped to 60% from 70%. do you know what i should be shooting for?
2. great. thanks for the insight. will do.
3. what's interesting is that i have the email sign up option but i guess it's not clear enough. only thing is fb is great from a social user acquisition standpoint. there's embedded virality aspects within the site such as collection and commenting that works great in acquiring super targeted users (their friends). 70/30 of our users opt with the facebook sign up. but you seem to say that we should make email sign up much more prominent bc sign up is better than no sign up. maybe like a wanelo.com look? do you know the efficacy of having google+ / twitter as well or stick to the most effective one on my platform and then just give email.
i'm not in the flash sale business. i'm in the discovery commerce business (what i want to do is create a platform for local retailers to properly market their products/stores without having to get into a groupon scenario to get discovered. gilt/fab naturally has to move toward a marketplace concept because of growth and market conditions: need to move bigger amount of inventory and in a booming stock market scenario, inventory with good deals is not that readily available.
thanks again so much for your comments and i hope to incorporate a lot of the changes as fast as possible. btw do you know anyone who is a pro tablet/mobile/cross browser interface guy that can make my site usable in other states than just laptop on chrome/firefox? my guys do not have that experience.
also if you would like please use the username: rebecca@reppio.com password: guest to peruse the site.
your feedback has been super helpful so far.