Early Success Stories: Shopping, Fashion and Open Graph

Over the past few months, shopping and fashion has become one of the faster-growing categories of timeline apps. Companies in this space are attracting a new type of user – shopaholics and fashionistas. These social apps are developing a global presence, securing funding and building across web and mobile, and they’re seeing new traffic to their websites and increased mobile installs through their use of Open Graph.

• Fab: Daily design app Fab has increased membership from 1.8 million to over 4.5 million since launching with Open Graph in January. Additionally, 20 – 40% of traffic is from Facebook on a daily basis.

• Pose: Style app Pose has seen a tenfold increase in daily signups for their mobile app and website since launching with Open Graph. 40 million poses are viewed per month, up from less than 10 million prior to Open Graph launch.

• Giantnerd: The outdoor goods retailer integrated with Open Graph and has seen traffic from Facebook increase 214%. Giantnerd has also found that new users signing up from Facebook has increased 69%, and Facebook-connected users have an 18% higher average order value than the site average.

• Fashiolista: The European style inspiration company saw a 200% increase in traffic from Facebook after the first month of using Open Graph. This increased to almost 300% over the following months. Recently, almost a third of total daily new registers have been coming from Open Graph.

• Lyst: London-based social shopping site Lyst saw their user base double and traffic more than double since launching Open Graph. People coming from Facebook to Lyst spend 50% more time on the site than other users, and more sales come through Facebook than all other social media sources combined.

Best Practices

• Use a call to action: Display a clear call to action to encourage people to add your app and start connecting with their friends. For example, Fab offered a limited time, promotional credit to encourage people to opt in to the social shopping experience, and they currently show a facepile of friends during sign in to increase personalization. See more, here.

• Create multiple action types: Apps should experiment with actions related to each point of the buying lifecycle, from discovery through purchase. Fab enables people to “fave” products, Pose users can “pose” items, and Fashiolista users can “follow” other people, creating more opportunities to share that are meaningful for each community. Details can be found here.

• Use object types to create categories: Developers should create objects for categories that enable people to compile interesting timeline aggregations. For example, Pose displays a person’s “Most Loved Brands” and “Top Loved Style Items.” More can be found here.

We're continuing to see shopping and fashion companies recognize the sustainable growth that Open Graph can provide when you build long-term trusted relationships with your users. Recently, Shoedazzle, Go Try It On!, ideeli, TheFancy and OpenSky launched timeline apps. If you’re a shopping or fashion app developer, be sure to submit your app for the App Center if you haven’t already.

For more information on getting started, please see our checklist, best practices, tutorial and case studies.