Facebook Commerce Not Up to Expectations?

Bloomberg is reporting that, while Facebook continues to drive brand awareness, attempts to capture e-commerce transactions have not been very effective.

Gap, which has 5.6 million Facebook fans from its namesake, Banana Republic and Old Navy pages, opened and discontinued a storefront last year, said Liz Nunan, a company spokeswoman. The San Francisco-based company also discovered customers preferred shopping on its own sites, she said.

“We will continue to evaluate if this is something we want to bring back in the future,” Nunan said in an emailed statement.

For travel marketers and techies, this is a caution about jumping into Facebook commerce. Being on the bleeding edge doesn’t often give the best ROI.

In the meanwhile, Inntopia users are already embedding booking widgets on their Facebook pages to let those Facebook users who want to shop do so. It’s not fully integrated Facebook commerce, but it creates a seamless experience for users. And, it’s easy and cheap to implement.

A great example is South Dakota Tourism’s ‘Book a BH Trip’ app on their Facebook page. Take a look! They will share just how easy it is to implement at the Inntopia User Group Conference in Vancouver this May.