Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other website. A
Minneapolis social commerce company is giving users one less reason to
sign off.
Alvenda
announced
the rollout last week of an e-commerce Facebook tab for Delta Air
Lines. The service is the first of its kind for the travel industry and
allows Facebook users to search, book, and buy flight tickets without
ever leaving the site.
The idea behind Alvenda's technology is to embed their clients' stores
on the websites where their customers are already spending time. It also
allows retailers to embed stores within advertisement boxes and as a
widget on publishers' sites.
Alvendra was founded in 2008 and was the winner of the 2009 Minnesota
Cup competition. Its team consists of about 20 people, and it continues
to grow, according to product strategist Erik Eliason. Large companies are very interested in social media, he says, and Alvenda's tools give them
a way to monetize and prove the ROI of a network like Facebook.
Other services allow companies to add shopping tabs to Facebook pages, he says,
but most of them redirect customers to other sites where the
transactions are completed. In e-commerce, retailers generally lose
customers at every click they require. "You want the search and the transaction to be as frictionless as possible for the consumer," says Eliason.
Alvenda opened the first retail store inside Facebook last summer for 1-800-Flowers.
Source: Erik Eliason, Alvenda
Writer:
Dan Haugen