Village Gamer

Wishpond has officially launched its new social commerce platform for small businesses— Wishpond Social Buttons. Think of them as super-charged Like buttons—shoppers engage on ecommerce websites to share expressive stories and recommendations to their social network on Facebook. The platform is designed to allow businesses to leverage the Open Graph on any website without spending $10,000’s to hire developers or purchase enterprise solutions.

“90% of online sales occur on retailer’s websites,” said Ali Tajsekander, Founder & CEO of Wishpond. “In parallel 67% of shoppers spend more when they have received a recommendation from their online community of friends. Wishpond marries the power of both with Social Buttons directly on retailers websites.”

Previously, these solutions have cost upwards of $25,000. Wishpond Social Buttons is available for just $19/month—with a free 30-day trial.

“We’ve been talking with many of our current customers and they’re as excited as we are about Social Buttons,” said Ian Cruickshank, Wishpond’s Chief Revenue Officer. “They want the tools to expand into social commerce—they simply could not afford them until now.”

Large brands, such as Hallmark and American Apparel, are already seeing results from their use of social commerce on their websites. “It’s allowed us to get detailed insights about the popularity of our products beyond the Like button,” said Stacey Shulman, CIO, American Apparel.

Social Buttons gives small businesses a way to move beyond marketing campaigns that are focused primarily on awareness and lead-acquisition to social shopping solutions that focus on revenue. And rather than push sales in social media, the new platform brings a Facebook-powered social layer to e-commerce sites.

“Instead of an endless cycle of trying to get new fans and followers on outside social networks,” says Tajsekander, “Social Buttons works to push users directly to ecommerce websites where they can be converted into customers.”

Social Buttons also hopes to quell the endless stream of generic “Likes” with real emotions that will put context to the actions users are taking on the web. Shoppers will be able to express themselves and provide more pointed feedback with more than a dozen (and growing) verbs that include “Love”, “Wore”, “Hype” and “LOL”.

Social Buttons is as easy to implement as a Facebook Like button. This makes it possible for the growing number of businesses that use all-in-one solutions, such as Shopify, Volusion, BigCommerce and Magento Go, to easily adopt Social Buttons.

Wishpond currently has 10,000 businesses using their suite of applications.