Leveraging the Facebook “Like” Button in Your Online Store

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
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Until recently, Facebook activity was solely limited to its website. That changed the day it released the Like Button for the web. If you have ever used Facebook, you know that you can indicate approval by clicking the “Like” link found under every status update, photo or Facebook page. “Liking” a Facebook element adds a status line to your profile. For example, “Greg Smith likes The San Diego Zoo.” It also includes a link back to that page which will often drive traffic from your Facebook friends.

Facebook’s new Like Button is designed to extend this functionality across the web. By implementing this powerful tool on your website or store, your visitors can now “Like” your products and web pages, effectively sharing this on their profile. Consider this: Facebook has over 400 million active users. The average user has about 130 friends. That alone can generate significant potential exposure for your business.

Facebook also has an analytics tool called Insights to give you an idea of what kind of people are liking your pages, and how often your content is being re-shared. The graphs will provide you with an excellent idea of what content is most interesting to which demographic. This information can be invaluable. Nexternal has already integrated the Like Button for products into its ecommerce system; so it is simple for its clients to take advantage of this functionality. It is also very important for merchants to specify their Admin ID when they turn on the Like functionality as Facebook has begun requiring this verification. Nexternal clients can easily specify this in their Settings section in the Compatible Software area. If you are unsure what your Admin ID is, Facebook has provided information on this topic here:

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

Further information on Facebook Insights is located here:

http://www.facebook.com/insights/

It is important that merchants verify their website and/or store by placing the verification code that is provided by Facebook as a Meta Tag. Once again, Nexternal makes this easy for its clients. Simply place the verification code in the Head Addendum located in Layout under the Advanced Layout section and this step will be complete. Detailed information on using Facebook Insights with Nexternal is found here:

http://www.nexternal.com/ecommerce/knowledge-base.asp?Answer=5019

Facebook’s ambitions lie in extending its platform into other areas and activities on the web. Smart merchants can use this to their advantage.

After receiving a degree in Industrial Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Alex began his career as a technology consultant with Accenture. In 1999 he left Accenture and founded Nexternal – a cloud-based eCommerce Platform company. Alex is passionate about eCommerce and online marketing. He is now a Senior Vice President of HighJump, managing the Nexternal business unit.