UK FCommerce: from Goldrush to Maturity

Having just received the latest Social Media Benchmark results from the eDigitalResearch survey that looked at 73 of the UK's leading retail brands, it makes for interesting reading.
Retailers are continuing to grow their legions of followers, with the top ones still attracting tens of thousands of new ones each month across the different social networks. However the main platform for engagement is most definitely Facebook, with UK market leaders such as ASOS adding the most. TopShop is still the only UK retailer over a million followers (although River Island is closing in) and fashion retailers as a whole are the obvious trail-blazers, due to their target demographic being so prevalent in Facebook usage.

However a growing trend that I’m particularly interested in is the continued introduction of Fcommerce, with nine of the top twenty retailers in the study already offering their followers the ability to shop from their Facebook pages. Its fair to say that the retailers who established a social media presence early one are now the ones who are reaping the benefits…. and its therefore my belief that those who do the same over the next few months with Facebook Social Commerce will grow their sales as well as their social footprint the most.

FCommerce has arrived

I've been mentioning the use of FCommerce (Facebook Commerce) for retail ecommerce for almost a year now. In fact, I believe that coordinated selling via Facebook and other Social Media channels is the 4th stage of the Social Media Maturity Matrix.

And it finally looks like its taking off in a big way, with the announcement today that French Connection, the UK clothing chain are to join Asos in opening Facebook store at the end of the month.

http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/02/09/french-connection-joins-asos-in-opening-facebook-store/

It seems that you'll be able to buy directly from Frech Connection's news feed, therefore hopefully creating some value for the retailer to the act of 'liking' a brand online.

Online retailers fail on email customer service

Figures released today from the the eDigital Research survey of 39 UK eTailers , has Play.com, Amazon and Asos claiming the top three slots this year . However many of them provide poor customer service by email.

eConsultancy goes into more detail and give specific examples of which online retailers do well (and which ones don't):
http://econsultancy.com/blog/3282-etailers-need-to-work-on-customer-service

More details are available if you download the report:
http://www.edigitalresearch.com/news/item/nid/849753604
(I'm waiting on my one right now)