TurnTo turns your visitors into buyers by bringing the power of “Social” right onto your ecommerce site. Using Facebook and other networks, the system tells visitors which of their friends have bought from you before and what they got. That increases engagement and trust, which leads to higher conversion rates, increased average order values, and improved repeat purchase rates. Shoppers say TurnTo improves the shopping experience by providing trusted sources of ideas and advice at just the moment they are needed - when they are shopping. Adding TurnTo to your site is an easy way to get measurable ROI from Facebook and other top social networks.
Think of TurnTo as a “personalized customer wall-of-fame” in your store. It’s personalized because instead of showing celebrities, it shows each shopper customers to whom she has a personal connection. Friends. Friends-of-friends. Neighbors. It also shows the purchases of those customers - a powerful merchandising tool. The effect is both short-term and long-term: increasing trust and loyalty while encouraging consideration and impulse purchase.
The user experience is simple. A shopper on your site sees a button that says “Need ideas? See what friends bought!” (Or anything else - you customize this.) With a few clicks, the shopper connects to their Facebook profile or email account. The system compares this list of contacts to the list of your customers and shows the user any matches found. Sometimes the shopper will reach out to these friends for advice, and sometimes it’s enough just to know that friends have shopped at your store and to see what they bought.
To deliver as many matches as possible, the system also looks for friends-of-friends and neighbors (and soon, groupmates). Neighbors are based on zip code. If no direct zip code matches are found, the system will search a broader area, ensuring that there are never zero matches.
Of course, TurnTo rigorously preserves the privacy of your customers. The system always checks to see if a match has opted-in to being shown as reference. If yes, the shopper sees the friend’s name. If no, the friend is identified only as “a friend”. Then, the system offers to broker a connection between the shopper and that unnamed friend, allowing the customer to remain anonymous if they choose. That enables you to make your entire customer base available as a reference pool from the first day you turn on the system. To build up the number of opted-in references, the system also provides tools for you to request an opt-in at multiple points post-purchase, including the order confirmation page and post-purchase emails.
The power of the TurnTo approach is context: your customers are only connected to their friends at just the moment when those friends are actually shopping. That makes the shopper feel like they are getting helped by their friends, not spammed. And your customers feel like they are helping their friends rather than being used to promote your products.
Too many words? The best way to understand what TurnTo is all about is just to try it. Go ahead!