Sortprice: An E-Commerce Service Using Social Media and Facebook

Around the beginning of March, I had an interview at a company called Sortprice.  They were looking for sales reps to market their service to businesses that have on-line stores.  I was intrigued by their service and would have been thrilled to sell it- except for the fact that it involved heavy phone sales and cold calling.

The gist of their service:
They have created an application ("app"- which basically means it's a computer software application that is hosted in a browser-controlled environment such as java... ) that they offer to their clients.  This application works with facebook fanpages.  Once a company has a fanpage on facebook and some other online store site they can easily apply the function to their fanpage - that when someone goes to their fanpage you see their products right there as if it was a duplicate store without ever leaving facebook! 

There have been statistics shows that facebook gets just about as many hits as google does so this is an excellent marketing ticket for e-commerce companies.  Plus, facebook is known for their targeted marketing- because the age, gender and location of the member is all recorded and the ads are manipulated to be appropriated for those stats.

Let's take Nike for example.  They have an online store selling their products, plus a fanpage on facebook.  When you "like" them on facebook and become a fan and then visit their fanpage- there you will see all of their products - exactly as you would see them on their site - and when making a purchase the checkout button is there and only redirected to the main check-out once you click on it.

If a store does not have a facebook page you can easily follow the steps on how to create one.  It's very easy.  The only requirement is that the business has a site with products and a checkout.

The benefits of Sortprice are:
1) Targeted marketing- getting the customers who are already fans of your company and products.
2) Never leaving facebook- and having the products right on the site.
3) Once you make a purchase all your friends can see and that increases the exposure as well.

There is a monthly fee- it is quite pricey- but companies can assess whether the fees are worth their ROI (return on investment) is worth it.  They have a lot of very satisfied customers, ie Petco, Adidas...

You can check them out as Sortprice.com.  Their actual website is a price comparison site.  The facebook feature is an added service they have developed more recently with the rise of facebook stores.