Facebook commerce, or F-commerce as it is being called, is developing at a startling fast pace, with new examples popping up daily on the Facebook platform. Simply adding products for sale in isolation on a Facebook page will probably not be enough to drive referral and purchase potential. Businesses, retailers, and brands need to be thinking about the social consumer experience of social commerce to help drive trial and purchase.

If F-commerce is part of your Facebook business and content strategy, you need to consider that people share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through people they know and trust. Isolated shopping carts on Facebook or using Facebook to drive consumers to an online non-social e-commerce or booking engine likely won’t drive adoption and I would venture to say are not social commerce.

While doing research in the travel sector for a HEDNA conference in Prague I am speaking at this week, I looked at booking engines and e-commerce solutions of some of the major hotels, airlines, destinations, and cruises. Travel is perhaps as social a category as you can get; we talk about travel with friends before we go, we share experiences while on the journey, and we tell our stories after we get back. These travel experiences are being shared on multiple platforms with our friends through photos, wall posts, tweets, updates, check-ins, blogs, and reviews.

The examples below are from the travel industry, but the overall principles for social commerce applies to all businesses considering F-commerce. Leveraging social plug-ins such as “like,” share, send, comment, photo sharing, and status updates should be part of the social commerce experience. Providing consumers with value-adds, special offers, product sampling, engaging experiences, loyalty rewards, stories, etc. should also be part of the experience.

Travel Industry “Booking Graphics” Inside Facebook

Companies such as Virgin Trains U.K., Four Points Sheraton, Air France, and Marriott International have added “booking graphics” on their Facebook pages with minimal functionality. These “booking graphics” allow the Facebook consumer to fill in their dates of travel, but the application drives the Facebook user outside Facebook to the traditional online non-social booking engine. These examples are not really social; they do not leverage social behaviors nor do they leverage the user’s social curve.

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