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Storefront Social is Benjamin Trotter’s latest project. But a quick Google search reveals that it’s far from his first attempt to create great experiences on the web. The first page of results is littered with his projects, all which reflect a quality that comes to bear in Storefront Social as well.
In a world where Facebook applications can feel like a strange netherword, Storefront Social presents users with a clean interface that allows them to browse, share, and purchase products from within a brand’s Facebook page. As more and more businesses find their potential customers on social networks, the size of the market opportunity is hardly a matter of debate. But unlike others who’ve sought to tread this ground, Trotter’s application actually makes me comfortable enough to buy something. It just feels right – and for most people that makes all the difference.
The application began as a project that Trotter started working on at his full time job as a Director of E-commerce and Marketing for San Francisco startup Peek, Aren’t You Curious? While looking for an option that would allow the company to monetize its Facebook community, Trotter quickly realized came to the conclusion that he could do better. In typical entrepreneurial fashion, he set out to make it so.
“We were looking for different ways to showcase our products, and we came up with the idea of showcasing our products in an exclusive area of our Facebook page,” he explains. “I started looking around at the different applications that would allow that kind of self-serve model. We didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars [on a custom solution] since we’re basically a startup as well. The places that I did find were just very jinky, the design wasn’t very good, usability was poor. When I saw what options were out there, I just thought, ‘Man, I could do this better.’ “
And he did. Proving that Trotter’s not your average Director of E-commerce and Marketing, he built what he says is “about 95%” of the platform himself, despite only a cursory knowledge of server-side scripting. “I come from a web design background, but I’m one of those people that will bang on something until it works. It was the first time I’d ever done any kind of database stuff,” he says. “I worked on it all the time; after work, on the weekends. It just kind of became my baby.”
In the months since, Storefront Social has emerged as a true e-commerce solution that sits on top of Facebook, allowing brands of all shapes and sizes to quickly and effectively deploy an online storefront within their existing Facebook page. “The more I worked on it, the more it became a platform, and I realized this was something I could market to other people in similar situations,” says Trotter.
It’s a full service solution for most customers, offering a number of template options, automatic product catalog updates, and integration with a wide array of third party services that make it easy for customers to extend their existing e-commerce operations onto the Facebook platform. While Trotter’s aim is mostly to serve small and medium-sized businesses, he said that some larger brands have approached him with requests for white-label implementations of the platform.
One customer told Trotter that they’d spend over $600 in advertising on Amazon product search, which generated about $3,000 of revenue for them. In comparison, the $29.95 monthly fee they paid for Storefront Social turned into $6,000 in top line revenue. “They’re really excited to be controlling another storefront that creates that exclusive community feel for their customers,” he said. “It just goes to show that some companies have been able to get this service to work for them in a really good way.”
It’s clear that the success of Storefront Social is due in large part to by Trotter’s desire to provide great customer experience like this one, and his background in usability and design have been a key to making a solution that works for both customers and users. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what looks best for the Facebook display and understanding that [customers] have different needs, depending on their products,” he says. With customizable features including layout flexibility, automatic product updates, and a host of social sharing features that allow people to share the products they’re interested in purchasing, Storefront Social offers a solution for almost any kind of business looking for a plug-and-play e-commerce solution that can adapt to their specific needs.
You can read the rest of Storefront Social's story on BostInnovation.com.
