Just recently Facebook launched a ‘like’ button plugin to enable brands to embed the ‘like’ feature within their corporate website. We all ‘like’ the like functionality don’t we? It’s one of the easiest ways to acknowledge your friends status, photos, videos posted on Facebook. All it takes is one click.

Levi’s was extremely fast to adopt this new feature making it a part of their online shopping experience. Here’s a brief overview:



Visitors to the Levis homepage will notice a promo for the Friends Store (below).



The Friends Store features a range of Levis products, each with a “like” button and the number of likes the item has received (below).



Using Facebook connect visitors can create their own store which they can share with their Facebook friends. It is populated with merchandise they and their friends have ‘liked’. (below)



Here’s what Levi's Megan O'Connor, director of digital and social marketing had to say about it:

"We really wanted to put [the Like button] as high up in the shopping path as possible,"

"We feel like it's going to revolutionize the way people shop for jeans online. Everything from knowing other users' expressed preferences, to our brand ambassadors telling their friends through the Like functionality that these are their favorite jeans.

So, is this working? With top jeans getting between 1,000 and 600 ‘likes’ it looks like site visitors are getting involved. Think about this for a second. When these people indicate they ‘like’ this product it’s automatically displayed in their Facebook news feed. 501® Original Jeans - Dark Aged have enjoyed personal recommendations from 1,014 people to their network of real friends. According to Facebook statistics the average person has 130 friends, so personal endorsements for this particular pair of jeans has reached over 130,000 friends.

It’s also a great market research tool. O’Connor mentioned the brand might feel they have a best seller on their hands but with the ‘like’ system they may discover their customers ‘like’ something completely different.

Levi’s has attracted more than 16,000 “people who like” [formerly known as fans] since they launched the Friends Store. Today they have 300,983 people who like on Facebook.

How will ‘like’-type functionality affect the future of how brands will connect with customers?

People-power! Here comes a really simple way for people to let the brands know what they like. We all trawl through the Internet and notice things we really like. More and more your customers will be able to simply click a button to notify their friends and the web that “Yes, indeed I do really like this Stella McCartney handbag…”

In the near future your customers will increasingly come across ‘likes’ from their friends and the public when they are searching for products or browsing for content like music, video and news articles. In effect people are becoming the editors.

Give it a go
‘Like’ functionality is not limited to products. Your brand can embed this feature against any type of content – articles, photos, news, videos. Just like the ‘share’ button that some brands seem to spray thoughtlessly across their sites we should show restraint and consider which elements on your corporate website you would like to invite feedback on and even more importantly what are your site visitors going to want to ‘like’. What you do with this information has huge potential in terms of content development and even new product development. I’ll be talking more about crowd-sourcing in our next blog.