[admin]

Volusion’s CEO discusses the advantages that social networking sites provide online business owners in the Small Biz Technology article, Leveraging Social Media for Ecommerce.“The continued growth of online shopping over the past years has drawn many new small businesses to the online arena. As online stores and their revenue continue to grow, the amount of [...]

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[mickstads]

I enjoyed Volusion's CEO, Kevin Sproles article on Social Networking. I agree that gaining exposure on some of the most visited websites on the planet (Facebook, MySpace) is invaluable from a marketing standpoint. Driving traffic to our website is our number one focus but keeping them there and coming back are a close second. Adding a social networking module to our site would accomplish both of these goals. Google has a service in limited Beta called "Google Friends Connect" www.google.com/friendconnect/. "Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site."

It looks promising, but adds these features via an Iframe, so we don't get the benefit of the user generated content contained within the Iframe.

I would like to see Volusion take a proactive approach to the next step in Social Networking, and, as Kevin Sproles puts it, "savvy consumers want products from businesses they can trust, learn from, relate to and “be friends” with."