Between music, virtual gifting, gaming and retail goods, Facebook is turning into a virtual online mall of sorts. We’ve written about Payvment, a startup that allows anyone to create and operate a retail storefront on Facebook. Today, Payvment is launching an innovative new feature for storefront owners on Facebook: the ability for retailers to provide instant discounts and coupons to users that become Fans or “Like” their Facebook page.
Payvment’s Facebook App lets anyone create a retail store on Facebook. The app lets you set up products, categories of products (i.e. shoes, T-shirts, sweaters), import photos, list terms of service and shipping options and more. Once you set up your online shop on Facebook, it will show up in a separate tab on your profile or page under “storefront”.
Called the Facebook Fan Incentive Pricing feature, the new functionality essentially bridges the gap between social interactions on the site and retail behavior using coupons and discounts. With the new feature, sellers can provide an electronic coupon or instant discount to potential and current fans by simply enabling the feature via Payvment’s storefront application for Facebook.
The pricing feature allows users to choose the discount amount to be provided to anyone that becomes a Fan of their Facebook page and current Fans are automatically provided the discount. And when visitors that are not Fans come to a storefront, Payvment automatically prompts them to become a Fan to receive special Fan pricing.
Another compelling feature of Payvment’s e-commerce app is the ability to allow shoppers to carry their goods with them across thousands of Payvment-powered storefronts on Facebook. It makes shopping on Facebook almost like shopping at Target, where you can visit multiple departments and buy all of your diverse purchases at once. Users can also add comments and reviews to Payvment-enabled storefronts.
As retailers flock to Facebook for both brand awareness and e-commerce, Payyvment’s free offerings are attractive because the platform is a one-stop shop for both efforts. However, Payvment isn’t the first to implement this strategy; 1-800-Flowers started offering discounts to users who became fans of its page last July. The startup, which just raised $1.2 million in funding, faces competition from BigCommerce, Alvenda and others.
