Here Come the Want Buttons

Facebook is certainly causing a stir in the digital marketing community with the introduction of Timelines, but that feature is far from the only development of note that has occurred in the past few weeks. The social networking behemoth's introduction of the Open Graph API has fostered a wave of innovation worthy of attention - particularly as it relates to Internet retailers.

Wanttt.com, for example just introduced its integration into the Facebook Timeline via Open Graph with a feature that enables consumers/shoppers to share the products they want on their Facebook timelines. The benefit for retailers is clear - increased sharing and tracking of buying intent.

Wanttt by itself is rather innovative and the "wanttt" process is pretty simple. Retailers add the "Want" button to the product page of their site with a few lines of code. Shoppers then create Want lists and as products are clicked on and added to those shoppers' lists, inbound links are generated from Wantt.com to the retailers' product details pages - in theory helping out with SEO via increased links.

Products are also shared on the users Facebook's timeline, increasing the social footprint of the retailer. The best part is that retailers have the ability to send messages to their "Wanters" and potentially generate some more sales. Wanttt claims six times the conversion rate for email campaigns to Wanters, in fact.

"The Want button has not only increased our social footprint, but it also has improved our exposure to like-minded shoppers, and this context is what makes the Want button stand out," says Sam Grossman, marketing manager of Sharper Image. "We've found that shoppers who create Want lists purchase at a much higher rate and also have a 21 percent higher average order value than our other traffic."

"Now, with the integration of Want into Facebook's Timeline, our exposure has increased exponentially," Grossman continued. "Our shoppers are sharing not just within the Wanttt.com community, but also on Facebook, and we are already seeing benefits from the additional exposure through traffic, sharing and sales."

Wanttt is far from the only service of its kind, but every now and again it's interesting to see how software vendors and platforms are leveraging Facebook for the benefit of consumers and themselves.