Case Study: Incipio Taps Facebook as a Sales Channel

PROBLEM: Incipio, a designer, manufacturer and retailer of accessories for mobile devices, wanted to bring its product assortment and shopping experience to the place where its customers and prospects were spending the majority of their time — Facebook.

SOLUTION: Partnered with an e-commerce solutions provider to establish a Facebook storefront.

RESULTS: Since launching its Facebook commerce platform in January, Incipio has seen a 20 percent lift in conversion from consumers originating from or purchasing via Facebook compared to non-Facebook traffic. In fact, Facebook is now the No. 2 source of organic traffic to Incipio's site (Google). The average order value for Incipio's Facebook customers is also higher vs. the brand's non-Facebook customers. It's all added up to an increase in revenue.

It's not surprising that tech-savvy consumers are likely to spend more time on social networking sites compared to other consumer demographics. This is a big reason why Incipio, a cross-channel retailer of mobile device accessories, decided to bring its online store to its customers rather than vice versa. Incipio launched a Facebook store in January with the help of on-demand e-commerce solution provider ShopVisible.

Incipio isn't new to Facebook — the brand debuted on the social networking site in 2007. As of press time, Incipio had 15,926 Facebook fans. Pre-Facebook, Incipio could be found on Myspace. Having a social presence has been part of the company's culture since it was founded 12 years ago.

"Our whole concept behind this was to take our product line to where our customers were spending their time rather than asking them to leave the site," says Andy Fathollahi, Incipio's president, of the retailer's decision to launch a Facebook storefront. "Recent statistics show that the average person spends an hour on Facebook a day. A lot of people are spending most of their web experiences within Facebook."