Last week when Facebook Deals launched I quickly wrote the post: Facebook Deals Will Rock Local. Most of the comments were critical and skeptical about the SMB adoption issue. Here’s a representative comment:
Most SMBs are just fine with their websites and may or may not have a Facebook Page or Place or whatever you call it them. There isn’t enough focus on the actual needs of that restaurant owner who will actually never really be marketed to about this.
The first deals went live last weekend including the well-publicized Gap “free Jeans” deal. Matthew Ingram discussed apparent myriad problems with consumer understanding of how to redeem the offer:
[I]f you go to the page that The Gap set up on Facebook for the promotion, there are a whole pile of bewildered users — most of whom appear to have been going to the Facebook page and typing the words “check in.” Others said they had gone to a Gap store and didn’t have “the coupon” they needed for jeans. Most clearly didn’t understand that checking in required the Facebook Places feature, and that the offer also required users to do this at a specific Gap store location, using an iPhone or an Android device.
Now that I’ve seen how Deals operates in practice my critique is not so much about the SMB side but that the consumer experience is less than optimal. I’m not really worried about SMB education or comprehension. I’m also not worried about consumers figuring out how to redeem in the end. That will come in the near term. My issue, which Michael Bauer alludes to in his comment on my “Rock” post, is about the overall user experience.
The historical problem with Foursquare is that I can’t really use it to plan where I’m going very easily, although it’s developing more tools and content along those lines. I can use Google Places or Yelp, yellow pages apps, Urbanspoon or WHERE to search or browse for businesses, see offers and make decisions about where I want to go later tonight (not where I am right now) or this weekend (also not where I am right now).
Foursquare in the past required real-world promotion of the incentive/reward to create the desired behavior: consumer loyalty and repeat business. Originally there was really no way for me to know the incentive on the Foursquare app itself. When I checked in I was already present in the store or restaurant. Nearby deals, which sometimes show up, might get me into another local business. And nationally publicized retail deals might get me to show up at a store to redeem an offer. But there is/was a fundamental problem with Foursquare; I can’t really use it as a planning tool to make decisions. That’s changing to a degree and will change over time as Foursquare is compelled to evolve.
This is the nature of the user-experience problem today with Facebook Deals as well. I can only see nearby businesses, which may or may not have deals. I can’t search for a business somewhere else that I might visit “later.” I can’t see all the offers that may be available (beyond nearby) and then make a determination about which place I want to go to. I may be willing to travel farther depending on the offer. Right now, getting an offer is purely a matter of serendipity tied to where I am at this moment — and I might already be headed to the business with the offer. Facebook Deals therefore has a potentially limited impact on consumer behavior. (A list of deals somewhere would be very useful for everyone.)
Yelp isn’t perfect either, only letting me see offers around me. But holistically Yelp lets me do quite a bit more in the way of making decisions than Facebook Deals today. And The Dealmap lets me search and browse for deals nearby or in a different location (online or in mobile).
The operative notion is probably: Facebook is so large and has so many people using it on mobile phones that Deals will have a material impact on local promotions regardless of how well designed or executed. I generally agree with that assumption. But to maximize the impact of Deals for consumers and business owners Facebook needs to improve the user experience in a number of ways.
November 9th, 2010 at 11:41 am
Greg,
It makes me think of the “differentiator” at Local Matters way back when. It was route mapping. The Local Matters Destination Search platform enabled the easy assembly of maps, routes, evenings out, what have you by way of executing a search and then putting together elements of a path.
They might include a trip to the Gap, a stop for lunch, another shopping experience, a movie, a coffee shop, etc.
Like Foursquare, I think the Facebook places implementation is lacking due to its proximal / temporal constraints.
In the ultimate expression of the idea, the value of the check-in to the merchant is greatly enhanced if the shopper has announced their intention to check-in prior to arrival.
To some extent Google maps includes the route mapping feature, but it’s still nowhere near as elegant as the original Local Matters implementation.
November 9th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg Sterling, Will Scott, perryevans, Noah Elkin, Regator [Technology] and others. Regator [Technology] said: The Problem with Facebook Deals (Screenwerk) http://bit.ly/9bMkOu [...]
November 9th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
[...] The Problem with Facebook Deals [...]
November 15th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
[...] Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence addresses some of the limitations with the current check-in model being used by Facebook, [...]
January 22nd, 2011 at 1:02 am
Greg, I hope you don’t mind the self-promotion here, but I agree with your points and believe that Facebook deals is an attempt to promote a Facebook service (FB Places) without offering much value to the user.
Groupon has a similar problem with Groupon Stores — their merchant self-service platform, which allows merchants to run their own deals, but requires they attract “followers” first, essentially asking them to mirror their efforts on Facebook on their platform.
For these reasons (and others) we’ve created PublicDeals (http://www.publicdeals.org), a simple tool that allows merchants to run their own Groupon-style daily deals on their Facebook pages. We’ll see more of this type of thing as commerce gets more and more popular on Facebook.
Our hope is that merchants will discover our solution and find how easy it is to do your own Groupon style deals yourself, generating real revenue without requiring a physical “check-in” via mobile phones, and attracting new fans and customers via the viral nature of status updates on the Facebook platform.
January 31st, 2011 at 12:37 pm
[...] previously criticized Deals as poorly executed, despite being a huge opportunity for the company. However partners using Deals to drive in-store [...]
August 23rd, 2011 at 2:09 pm
[...] Sterling, writing during Screenwerk, creates a identical suggestion, observant that a simple grounds of a check [...]
December 13th, 2011 at 6:27 am
[...] sure if that’s how you spell Schmeels but I like it. Anyway, as Greg points out in his post The Problem with Facebook Deals (with a little, let’s say, more grown-up way of summarizing my comment in a previous post on [...]