ShopSocially, a social commerce startup, is formally announcing the launch of its social shopping platform and is revealing some of its early insights from its customer lineup. The company has worked with several hundred customers to date, including big-name brands like Sears, The Children’s Place, Sport Chalet, CafePress, Ritz, Zales and others.
We’ve also learned that the company had quietly raised an angel round of $550,000 late last year through TiE Angels, which is in addition to the $1.1 million in funding from October 2010. Participating in the round were executives from Apple, Google, and Symantec, several VCs and TiE board members, however the individuals did not want their names disclosed at this time.
The startup, for those unfamiliar, offers a suite of social apps which retailers can embed into their website, within marketing campaigns or on their Facebook page. These apps support a wide range of functions, including everything from “share-a-purchase” (or “offer” or “promotion”) apps to a full-on social shopping community. The platform allows businesses to control when and how these apps are shown using rule-based targeting, and offers other features like SEO optimization, analytics and reporting, and more.
Rawat, who co-founded ShopSocially with Samir Palnitkar, recently shared with us some new numbers related to the impact ShopSocially was having on the e-commerce efforts of its clients. Using data aggregated from hundreds of retailers on the platform, the company found that it was able to produce up to a 3x increase in sales from email promotions, an average of 12% increase in site conversion by adding social sharing functionality, and was able to help brands convert 2-5% of their site traffic into Facebook fans.
In addition, through the implementation of a social shopping community in the style of something like Pinterest or Fab.com, for example, ShopSocially reported an average of 95% increase in onsite and fan page engagement. This is becoming an increasingly popular way to showcase items for sale – and you can see some examples of ShopSocially communities in action here on Burpee, on HBO’s shop, and on H2o+.
In one particular case, with client Ritz, the implementation of ShopSocially apps to its site had a huge impact on conversion – the company reports a 38.8% increase in conversion after implementation.
The company’s Series A was led by Valhalla Partners, with additional participation from angel investor Raman Khanna, Ashish Gupta and Dharmesh Thakker. ShopSocially’s CEO Rawat says they’ve kept things lean and are now on track to profitability this year.