Josh Himwich, VP of e-commerce solutions at Quidsi, told RetailWire, "We know that seven percent of everyone who comes to Diapers(.com) or Soap(.com) were at Facebook before they came to us and our best metrics suggest that about three to four percent of people after they leave Diapers or Soap go to Facebook."
The major challenge trying to sell on Facebook, according to Mr. Himwich, is that the site offers an environment based on communicating between friends and not selling items. That, he said, required a different approach, more like selling through mobile devices.
"Mobile is all about micro task. People only have two minutes that they're gonna give you, (so) if you could only have two minutes, what would you want them to do?" Mr. Himwich said.
The "what" Quidsi wants consumers to do is reorder from one or more of its sites, so each of its three Facebook pages contain a "Shop My List" tab that enables consumers to order from Diapers.com, Soap.com and BeautyBar.com all in one place.
The Facebook approach for Quidsi is all about helping current shoppers complete microtasks. Instead of running out to a retail store to make a purchase late at night, they can simply reorder during their Facebook time.
"Right now all you can do with this is reorder from past purchases, but for a lot of people that is 80 percent of what they need week to week. For example, on my list right now for diapers and soap, I have 57 items that I've purchased over the past six months. And so almost anything that I might possibly ever need is on that list. I'm not gonna get a new kind of paper towel every time (I shop)," Mr. Himwich told RetailWire.
Quidsi plans to run Facebook ads on the pages of consumers who "like" Diapers.com, Soap.com and BeautyBar.com.
"There are no wasted clicks on this. You can take them right to the app. So you can have compelling calls to remind them to shop within Facebook," Mr. Himwich said. "We are very excited about that part, about how simple and targeted and low cost it's gonna be for us to reach the exact costumers that we need on Facebook."