Posts Tagged facebook

Selling from our Facebook Page

July 27, 2010 at 12:23 am · Filed under Customer Engagement, facebook ·Tagged , ,

Our Facebook page is up and running for well over a year now and we’re delighted to have build up a following of over 1000 fans or people who “like” the page . The page is a fun and informative way to “chat” to our existing and potential customers. We regularly run competitions, offers, discounts and post articles and links. Our Facebook fans can post their own reviews and often send us photos of the kids in their PuddleDucks gear. We love it. Overall, Facebook is definitely our social media channel of choice.

As an online retailer we are always interested in finding new ways to show off and sell our products. I recently read a piece in Practical Ecommerce about different ways of selling  your products from your Facebook page. I feel it is too early and currently too unsecure to sell directly on the Facebook page but I do feel that there is a great opportunity to “show off your wares” to your Facebook fans and route them through to your website. After doing a bit of reaseach I selected Shop Tab as the Facebook application we would use.

When installed it shows your products on a new “Shop” tab on your page. Clicking on a products takes the customer to the appropriate page on the website where the secure purchase can (hopefully!) take place.

The installation of the application is really easy. The pricing plan I selected included a free 7 day trial and a charge of $10 per month after that. You just sign up through Facebook, add your page details and then upload a CSV file of your products to ShopTab. The format of this file is defined by Shop Tab and it includes, Product Name, Description, Category, Price, Product url and Image url. Upload the file and the products appear on a new Shop tab on your Facebook page.

So far, I have only included a subset of our products on the Shop tab. More will be added more as we go along. I will also be keeping a close eye on Google Analytics to see how much extra traffic comes from our new Facebook shop window.

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Changing your Facebook Fan Page Username

June 29, 2009 at 8:01 am · Filed under facebook ·Tagged , ,

Facebook announced a while back that personal Facebook users could change their Facebook url from a randomly selected id to a meaningful url. This was possible for personal facebook pages from last week. So my own facebook profile is now at www.facebook.com/aedanryan.

However, there was a limitation for businesses with Facebook Fan pages. Initially, You needed to have 1000 fans on your page in order to change the url. We didn’t qualify for this as we have around 130 fans signed up on the PuddleDucks fan page.

From today (June 29th), Facebook fan pages with over 100 fans can now get their customised url. To do this go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ and select the username for any fan pages that you administer.

Later Update: It is now 25 fans to qualify for a customised username.

Therefore our page which in the past could be found at: www.new.facebook.com/pages/PuddleDucks/22282839694

can now be found at www.facebook.com/puddleducks

facebook fan page

This will make it easier to let people know about our page and to include on marketing material, press releases, email signatures, etc.

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Facebook Page Prize Draw Winner

April 7, 2009 at 12:39 pm · Filed under Animals, facebook ·Tagged , ,

The winner of the March draw for the €50 PuddleDucks voucher made among our Facebook Fans is Nuala Carolan. Congrats Nuala!

Nuala is fan number 17 on the list of fans from our Facebook page.

facebook3

The number 17 was picked by our two dogs, Pepper and Rory last evening at PuddleDucks HQ – ably assited by Jake (nearly 8). It was a little chaotic but we got there in the end!

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Makeover for our Facebook page

March 13, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under facebook ·Tagged , ,

Facebook have recently implemented a new look to Fan pages. The main change is that the fan page now looks more like your personal facebook page. Most of the page is now taken up with the Wall tab.

Here’s what the PuddleDucks Fan page now looks like:

facebook-page

Overall it’s an improvement on the old style page but I also have a few reservations.

Like:

In  the old style page it was difficult to engage directly with fans on new content or offers. Now fans will see the new fan page status updates (including photos and videos) appear directly on the news feed on their personal page. This will really improve engagement and is a major change for the good.

You can slso configure the page so that fans and non-fans see different landing pages.  I have set it up so that fans land on the Wall (careful!) while non-fans land on the Info tab.

Don’t like:

For us, the ability of fans to add photos to our page is important. In the past, fans have added photos to the page of their kids wearing the PuddleDucks gear. In the new layout the fan photos are lost in the Photos box and it is not visible at all unless the Photos box is clicked.

The Information box is also not very useful. The only information visible on the full page display is that we were founded in 2005 – not the most important piece of information about PuddleDucks that I’d like people to see.

Summary:

I have a lot more experimenting to do to improve the look and feel and the user experience. I must find out more about Facebook applications as they can also be integrated into the pages.

Finally a reminder of the benfits of joining as a fan of PuddleDucks on Facebook. At the moment we have a draw for a €50 PuddleDucks voucher – the draw takes place at the end of March among all the fans. And our fans are entitled to free postage on all orders. Come join us as a fan here.

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PuddleDucks on Twitter

October 28, 2008 at 9:24 am · Filed under Our business, social networking ·Tagged , , , ,

Here at PuddleDucks HQ (aka corner of the living room!), we’re always looking for ways to reach and keep in touch with customers. Things move quickly in the new social media and online PR world and we feel that small online businesses (like us!) need to move quickly to keep up. In the last three months we have started this blog, created a Facebook fan page and in the last few days we have finally set up on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter we’d love if you would follow us here. I am excited about having another way to highlight the news about PuddleDucks and to chat to our followers (and to follow too). I am not sure how it will work for us but I’m looking forward to finding out. I’ll blog soon again about Twitter and our experience of it.

Here’s a snip of the Contact Us details from our Home Page:

Contact Us

Contact Us

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The PuddleDucks Facebook Fan Page

September 19, 2008 at 11:47 pm · Filed under facebook, Our business ·Tagged , , ,

We’ve set up a Facebook fan page for PuddleDucks here. I’m not a big Facebook user but having a fan page looks looks like an interesting way of keeping in touch with customers. If a few people add themselves as fans then we can keep them up to date with new products, special offers and other news. Maybe people can join in a discussion, add photos or videos or maybe add reviews. Let’s see how it goes anyway – if you think it’s worthwhile and use Facebook, we’d really appreciate it if you would join as a fan.

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