Social eCommerce – Will “The Fancy” Fancy The Online Shopping World?

by Geno Thampi - 2/24/2012 7810 Views

The upside down social shopping system with a touch of pinterest concept

How would you normally shop online? You look for products first if you have not already setup your mind on what you are about to buy. Then you look for a supplier where you can get the best deal from and finally you make the purchase. This is the common and logical way to buy something online. That online shopping concept is about to become old skool (According to me it has already become old school). The reason for this is “thefancy.com” opening its door to sell products within the site itself. Fancy has become a standalone social eCommerce model from Thursday. Oh! Come on! Just another social eCommerce site? No! It’s not JUST another social eCommerce site. Here is why:

TheFancy.com has wisely used the pinterest image sharing concept and made it into a revenue model, which pinterest would have used to monetize their site. Here instead of customers looking for merchants or products, the customers actually inspire the product online. For example, I want a pair of casual shoes and I admire a particular model from Adidas, let’s say the JawPaw. I may have the intention to buy it or simply I admire it and I post it to “Fancy”. Fancy works as an image sharing site at this time and I can upload the image of the shoes with my comment. Once posted, the image would appear on my profile as I have “Fancy’d ” it. Now this page opens up options to “Buy it”, “Sell it” or just say “I own it” and of course the other regular social options such as commenting and sharing (which is termed as Fancy it here). I made such a catalog, see it live here.

The interesting fact is that these options to be open to the public. So, if there is some vendor for the shoes, they can click the link “I want to sell it” and add details about their offer. I was not able to review entering the sales details as this feature is only open to the Unites States for now and would be open to the world very soon. So once a vendor is approved for a particular product, he would be kinda pinned to that image so that anyone clicking the “buy” link would land on that vendor itself. This is real good news for the eCommerce marketers. Approval of the offer is based on the best bid which ensures that the consumer gets the best deal as well.

Fancy is a demand based eCommerce Platform
If we want to explain Fancy in simple words, “it is demand based”. Consumers post their demands and wish lists as images which would be acquired by the best vendors that the consumers decide. Marketers have a huge opportunity to tap into the new social eCommerce and get fast success here because of the simple reason that they are not looking for uncertain folks and turn them into customers. Instead, the customers are ready to buy their product and all the marketer has to do is to offer them the best deal.

Will fancy work for service providers to promote their business?
Fancy is great for promoting eCommerce businesses, but still would work great for service providers such as travel agents and hotels. An example is, imagine someone uploading an image of their favorite holiday destination. A travel agent or an accommodation provider in that area can always claim to sell their service within the image. We are still figuring out how fancy is going to work for promoting our SEO services ;) For now thefancy.com would work great for a limited number of service providers to promote their business if there service in some way can be illustrated with images.

The future of Fancy?
For me, this unique social eCommerce concept looks exceptionally great for both the consumers and internet marketers. We are not sure how much of the approaches by the vendors really convert into sales. However, the trends of the social eCommerce site has raised especially after the announcement of the feature to sell products within the site. I would get you more details on using Fancy for eCommerce marketing, once the doors are open to us in India.

Category :

Social Media

Tags :

social eCommerce, eCommerce promotion, SEO for eCommerce

About Geno Thampi

Not a born Shakespeare! But I still write articles and blogs to share my ideas and thoughts on SEO and SMO. Being a part of SEO research team of SubmitINme, I keep my ears and eyes open, and the pen ready to grab, write and share trending topics in search engine .... more info