NextWidgets Blog » Marketing

Kelly Wearstler launches NextPromote

alexsavic — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:20:14 +0000

The story of E-Commerce over Facebook has been a mixed bag at best. The industry has gone through the full cycle of hype and disappointment at lack of results within the last year. When NextWidgets first launched Facebook storefront solutions in 2010, we felt that there was potential, but that placing a store on a tab inside a Fanpage was just not visible enough to consumers to deliver actual results. We quickly learned that, logically, Facebook users will visit a Fanpage far more rarely than they would interact with Fanpage content posted through the News Feed. With this insight in mind, we set about to create a system whereby we could allow merchants to post dynamic product related widgets directly into their Fanpage News Feeds as status update messages and thus allow fans to see and interact with these widgets directly within the Home screen.

Today, this product, named NextPromote, was launched by one of our favourite clients, Kelly Wearstler, a leading fashion and interior design brand based out of Los Angeles, through their Fanpage Wall. The results on this first post immediately surpassed anything we have seen from a tab based Fanpage store. Along with NextShare, our social recommendation product, we feel that this is the future of e-commerce on Facebook as it provides a rich, interesting and engaging experience for users as well as real results for merchants.

Do Click-Rates Really Matter?

alexsavic — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:49:12 +0000

Back in August I read a great article called ‘Still Banging Away…‘ by Doug Weaver which was actually a re-post of an article he had written in 2007. This article really gives a good sense of how despite technology moving forward at lighting speed, a lot of the mindset within the online ad industry is still there where it was many years ago.

The article explores how despite technologies that allow for dynamic, expandable and richly engaging ad units, success is still mostly measured in terms of Clicks:

“Ten (NOW 15) years have gone by and everything has changed. Everything, that is, except our crack-like dependency on the click. In recent months I’ve spoken to dozens of marketers, agency execs and publishers and it’s become dismally apparent that nobody’s really moving on. Maybe the click-based success of Google is effectively blocking the sun on this issue, but we’re still living in collective darkness. It’s impossible to realize the true depth of web ROI when we always default to a metric that says we fail 975 of every 1000 times we touch the consumer.”

In this kind of scenario, does it even make sense to swim against the current ?

T-Mobile’s Social Media Ambassadors Strategy Deploys NextShare

alexsavic — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:32:57 +0000

For a little while now, T-Mobile in the Netherlands has been testing NextShare on certain products on their website to see the effect of consumers sharing through Facebook under an affiliate model. Due to the positive results received, the program will be extended across the breadth of the product range and last week T-Mobile gave a presentation at Thuiswinkel 2011 in Utrecht outlining the entirety of their strategy that focuses on allowing and encouraging consumers to become Social Media Ambassadors for the brand. The presentation is embedded below.

T-Mobile – Thuiswinkel Update 2011- Social Media & Ambassadeurs

View more presentations from Leon Gerrits

Visit us at Ad:Tech London

alexsavic — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:02:13 +0000

Come and visit us at our stand at Ad:Tech London this year on 21st and 22nd September. We’ll be exhibiting all our latest products and some sneak previews as well.

CMEA Capital makes a huge prediction on social commerce

alexsavic — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:08:06 +0000

A post on Vator.tv yesterday left me feeling very positive about NextWidgets and the direction we are headed. The post in question was about comments made by Sumeet Jain, a principal at CMEA Capital in relation to where e-commerce is headed. Jain is quoted as saying “It’s a matter of time—within the next five or so years—before more business will be done on Facebook than Amazon.” WOW!!

I, and i’m sure many others in the industry, have thought this for a while, but i’ve never heard anyone actually say it openly. It’s like a David and Goliath thing, where it would seem very presumptuous for any of us building these new tools to say that. Therefore these are welcome words, both bold and very encouraging, coming from an industry expert.

The post continues with Jain saying ” Social commerce will dominate the market, and it will take a number of different forms. Social information will become more available to show how people are linked together, and the social graph will be tied to commerce data to provide more personal and more relevant information. Jain used the example of recommendations, which will evolve to become more personal and immediate.”

We couldn’t agree more with this excellent analysis of where the market for social commerce is headed. What do you think – can social commerce become larger than Amazon ?