ASOS won in the category of “Best Use of Social Media” awarded by the e-Commerce Awards for Excellence in 2011.
ASOS is a typical example of having suitable business for social media marketing.
For those who have not heard about ASOS nor read our collaborative writing project yet, some brief facts about ASOS. ASOS is a UK-based global online fashion and beauty retailer and offers over 50,000 branded and own label product lines across womenswear, menswear, footwear, accessories, jewellery and beauty. It was established in June 2000 and has developed quickly. In its recently announced 2011 financial results, the company revealed that sales had reached £339 million, up 52% compared to 2010. It ships in over 190 countries with zero shipping costs. The target market are fashion forward 16 to 34-year-olds.
On Facebook it has over 1 million fans and in addition it launched a Facebook shop in January.
Accoring to Marketing Week ASOS was the first brand to allow people to buy directly from a brand without leaving Facebook.
Previously brands had used third-party social commerce providers or used Facebook as a shopfront, directing shoppers to their site to complete the transaction.
In this blog post I do not want to talk about the reasons why ASOS is that successful in social media marketing, but to discuss the benefit of the Facebook shop.
I tried out to use the application embedded in Facebook and found it quite uncomfortable to browse through it. On the ASOS Homepage it takes me around 10 seconds to find the product I am looking for. On Facebook it took me around one and a half minutes. The fact that the application is integrated in Facebook makes it much more slower than on the ASOS shop and therefore make the shopping experience much more unconvenient.
In fact the Facebook shop is a detailed copy of the original ASOS shop, but with a sharing function of the products, so that the customer can show it to friends and ask them for advice.
I do not think that many people will buy from the Facebook shop as it is too slow and might have security issues for payments. But it is a funny gadget to show friends clothing you like and share their opinions.
I think that the main aim of ASOS’s Facebook store is to finally drive Facebook users to their normal store.
What do you guys think ?
I have to say, a number of FB applications are actually quite crappy. most mobile phone apps work better than an FB app, and these mobile apps run on a much slower connections usually (max 3G) and a much slower hardware processor. FB must keep track of posts like these to know things annoy people, and they need to take quick action before G+ sneaks in!
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