Seller Spotlight: TuTu Cute

Posted on May 16, 2012

Today we shine the Seller Spotlight on TuTu Cute a Payvment seller that knows how to keep their Facebook fans engaged. Deann Kump founded Tutu Cute in November 2011 and opened a Payvment store shortly after.

TuTu Cute is the latest in our occasional series featuring in-depth interviews with sellers. If you’re interested in being spotlighted, email us at community@payvment.com with a short note about your business and your experience with Payvment.

Please give us a quick overview of your company background, and how you got started.

I opened my boutique Tutu Cute LLC on November 14, 2011.  I am a stay at home mother of two sons and a daughter.  I wanted to do some kind of business of some sort.. I have 2 older boys so once I had my baby girl I just fell in love with the products.. so I decided to try it.

Once I received my products a few friends told me to open a Facebook account…boy was that the best move I ever did!  The business grew and grew.. then as I researched other boutique stores on Facebook I stumbled across your company.

Why did you open a Payvment store?

Shoppers are already on Facebook so it makes it very easy for them to buy without having to log off and go to another website. They can easily purchase directly from Facebook.

How has Payvment helped complement the social media activity you were already doing?

I love it! It makes it so easy for my customers to see my great products and purchase them at the same time!  It is very beneficial to my business!  Sells have boomed ever since!  I love the store, the shopping cart, the simplicity of adding items and the promote button.  The promote button by far is my favorite feature!

After opening my store it went crazy now I have customers from Paris, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, and all over the United States.

It’s been a huge thing for me. I would not be remotely successful without Facebook and Payvment.

In only 4 months I generated over 800 fans that like my page.

How do you like the new features we released with timeline?

I love the new display with the full page of products. It makes it easy for my customers to discover new products. The Shop Now tab is much more clear and easy to find with Timeline.

What tips or tricks would you share with someone who’s just starting to sell through Payvment?

I have a few different things I do on my Facebook page that I recommend to other sellers. One of them is “Triple Trivia Thursday.” Every Thursday I post 4 questions or a brain teaser for my fans to answer. I then select a winner each week who gets some free gifts. It drives a lot of participation in my store in fact, I get an average of about 45 comments on each Trivia post. Every Thursday my fans come back to try and win!

I upload lots of large product photos to my Facebook Timeline and always include a link to my storefront under each picture. My fans love this.

Also, free shipping is a great way to increase sales. When I implemented free shipping I went from having 15-20 orders a day to having 30-40 orders a day. It is surprising how much free shipping really makes a difference.

I love the discount feature so I can do 10 or 15% of all orders.


Thanks to Tutu Cute for taking the time to share their story! You can visit their Payvment Store here. If you’re interested in being spotlighted, send an email to community@payvment.com with a description of your business and your experience with Payvment.

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Seller Spotlight: Hot Line Pepper Products

Posted on April 27, 2012

Today we shine the Seller Spotlight on a Texas based hot sauce company that is focused on bringing spice to people’s lives. Kerry started Hot Line Pepper Products because of his love for all things spicy.

After speaking with Kerry we couldn’t help but order some hot sauce for the Payvment office! We are definitely enjoying it! They are amazing hot sauces!

Hot Line Pepper Products is the latest in our occasional series featuring in-depth interviews with sellers. If you’re interested in being spotlighted, email us at community@payvment.com with a short note about your business and your experience with Payvment.

Please give us a quick overview of your company background, and how you got started.

I always enjoyed spicy food, eating salsas, and making hot sauces. I love to cook and am a big “Foodie” so I decided to get more serious about making hot sauces. I went to school to get certified in manufacturing acidified foods (Hot Sauces) and low acid foods (Salsas, jellies etc.). Then started to create a few different types of sauces and sent them throughout the United States from Hawaii to New York to get feedback on the flavors. People from all over loved the hot sauce samples I sent out and after developing and tweaking for almost 2 years, I finally had 4 different hot sauces I was proud of and the rest is history. We are now an established family owned business that takes pride in making quality, custom blended Hot Sauces and Seasonings. We are all about the flavor with a variety of heat levels to please every palate. Creators of custom blended hot sauces with future plans to come out with unique spice blends and tantalizing pepper jellies and more… Our Mission is to offer products with amazing flavor profiles allowing our customers to be creative with endless possibilities of improving whatever they are cooking by adding Hot Line Pepper Products.

What types of products do you sell?

Four delicious hot sauces!


Garlicky Greengo – Fire roasted Jalapenos and Tomatillos with Lime and lots of Garlic.
Heat level “Medium”

Hatchanero – Fire roasted Hatch Chiles and Habanero Peppers.
Heat level “Hot”

Evil Ooze – Fire roasted Jalapeno and Habanero Peppers.
Heat level “Hot”

Ghost Pepper Sauce – Made with Bhut Jolokia aka Ghost Pepper and Habanero Peppers
Heat level “Extra Hot”

Why did you open a Payvment store?

I didn’t want to spend time, energy, and money on creating an e-commerce section on my website especially when my fans were already on Facebook. I drive people to my Facebook page so there is more interaction for my fans. I post photos and create interesting status updates.

What tips would you share with someone other sellers?

It is difficult to make customers go to a website if you are a new business. Everyone is already on Facebook so opening a store where the customers are just makes sense. I recommend that small businesses open a Payvment store for free instead of spending a couple grand on creating an e-commerce website.

I also suggest offering a fan discount. Once opening my Payvment store I implemented a 10% off discount to reward my Facebook fans.

On our website we have a splash page with a big Facebook button so people can get to our store from both Facebook and the website also.

What makes your hot sauce so special?

Many hot sauces out there are made with extracts, which creates achemical burn with not much flavor. Our gourmet sauces are made from  chiles and other fresh ingredients, creating different flavor profiles and have an all-natural flavor that you can taste the quality and love that goes into every bottle.

What is the most popular hot sauce?

Garlicky Greengo is the all time favorite because people love the jalapeno heat with the garlic flavor. It is a very versatile sauce.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Order some Hot Line Pepper Products today and “YEARN FOR THE BURN!”

Thanks to Hot Line Pepper Products for taking the time to share their story! You can visit their Payvment Store here. If you’re interested in being spotlighted, send an email to community@payvment.com with a description of your business and your experience with Payvment.

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Introducing Payvment Forums

Posted on April 19, 2012

We are excited to announce our new Payvment Forums. The forum is a place where you can go to learn from other sellers, contribute knowledge, ask for advice, and share stories from your selling experiences.

 

 

Discussions are organized into categories including Tips and Tricks, Feature Requests, Seller Stories, Shoppers, and more. You can add your own questions and discussions, contribute to existing topics, or just follow along. Other sellers want to hear what has worked for you! What do you recommend doing to drive engagement and encourage sales?

The forum is only as strong as its members, so we need your help filling it with useful posts and creating a lively community. Please help us get the forum going by taking a minute or two to answer a question or offer a piece of advice. We really value your input and know others in the community will too!

You can start posting here: http://forums.payvment.com/.  Thanks so much for being a part of the Payvment community!

Posted in General, New Features, Tips and Tricks
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Payvment Wins Best Social Startup at ad:tech San Francisco

Posted on April 6, 2012

Payvment sellers know they don’t need a huge marketing budget to be successful on the social web, and the judges of the Social category in the Startup Spotlight Series at ad:tech San Francisco, agreed, awarding Payvment “Best Social Startup” on Wednesday.

The ad:tech organizers chose a different model for their start up competition from most conferences. Industry leaders, venture capitalists and other advisors narrowed down the field from hundreds of start ups to 4 in each category, and then conference organizers gave each startup a scenario to present on in the live pitch session on Wednesday. In the Social category, each company was given a hypothetical budget of $500,000 to market a business’ brand.

CEO Christian Taylor represented Payvment in the competition against 3 other startups. While the other presenters pitched Facebook ad campaigns and strategies that required the full budget, Taylor turned traditional marketing models upside down. He explained how, for $30 a month, a business could use Payvment’s tools to build brand awareness and measurable ROI with social promotions and a store directly on Facebook.

Payvment’s low cost, high impact solution made its mark on the judges. When it was time to decide which of the start ups was most likely to change the world, judges Gayle Meyers, Partner at DMR Partners, Husani Oakley, Technology Director at Wieden + Kennedy New York, and Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund picked Payvment as the Best Social Startup of ad:tech San Francisco 2012.

 

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A new Store for the new Facebook Timeline

Posted on April 2, 2012

All Facebook Pages have now switched to the new Timeline layout, which means a few important changes for how you run your business on Facebook – and a brand new Storefront from Payvment:

Facebook Storefront

Many of you asked to display more products on your storefront. Shoppers now see 20 products at a time and can easily scroll by clicking the ‘more’ button at the bottom of the page.

Product detail pages now include larger product images, faster load times, and a bigger ‘Add to Cart’ button to make purchasing easier. Our social tools are now bigger and invite engagement and sharing through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.

Product detail page on Facebook

With this new storefront and the new Facebook Timeline, there are 3 important actions you should take:

• Add a cover photo: Make it big and beautiful to greet visitors to your Page – and consider refreshing it to highlight your brand and products.

• Set your ‘Shop Now’ tab as the #2 app: The Facebook photos app will appear first by default, but set your Payvment “Shop Now” tab second so it’s easy for shoppers to find. Learn how to do it here.

• Keep your promotions fresh: You can’t set your storefront as the landing page for new visitors with Timeline, so posting promotions and polls from your Seller Dashboard is the best way to get shoppers to your storefront. Frequent posting is important, but you can also ‘pin’ a post to the top of your Timeline for up to 7 days to get it noticed by new visitors.

We suggest you read our blog post on Timeline to learn more about the changes, and check out our Facebook Page and Twitter where we have been posting tips for this transition.

Bottom Line: It’s more important than ever to post frequently to keep your page fresh and your products and deals appearing in your Fans’ social streams. Our Social IQ Booster feature on your Dashboard provides effective daily marketing suggestions on how to grow your shopper traffic and transactions.

Posted in New Features, Social, Tips and Tricks
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Christian Taylor to speak at ad:tech San Francisco

Posted on March 28, 2012

Payvment Founder and CEO Christian Taylor will be speaking at ad:tech San Francisco, April 3-4. Ad:tech is the largest digital marketing conference with over 10,000 people in attendance representing brands, agencies, solutions providers and venture capitalists.

Christian is presenting in the Startup Spotlight: Next-Gen Social Advertising session on April 3, which is centered on marketing existing brands using social tools. Christian’s presentation will focus on the intersection of social and e-commerce, where Payvment is leading the charge to change the way we shop.  Dilip Venkatachari, Co-Founder and CEO of Compass labs, James Borow, Co-Founder and CEO of Graph Effect, and Roland Smart, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Involver, will also be speaking at the session.

The session is designed as a competition where each speaker presents ideas for marketing a brand within a confined budget using his company’s technology and approach. A panel of judges will then critique the ideas and declare their campaign of choice.

Payvment will also be featured in Innovation Alley at ad:tech, so stop by and visit us, learn about the product or just meet a few members of the team. Please contact us at support@payvment.com if you would like 25% off a conference pass We hope to see you there!

Details

ad:tech Startup Spotlight: Next-Gen Social Advertising

Wednesday April 3 2:00-3:00

Moscone Center West, San Francisco, CA

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Top Seven Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Your Page Ready for Timeline

Posted on March 15, 2012

You’ve probably heard the news by now – Timeline for Pages is coming, and you have until March 30th to get your Facebook Page ready to roll into its new look. You don’t have to publish any changes until March 30th, but on that date your Page will switch over. In the meantime you can use the “Preview” option to get everything looking good, and publish early if you wish.

To make the changes below, you can either click “Preview” then click “Start Tour” to be guided through the steps, or you can use your new Admin panel at the top of the Preview page to make changes one by one.

Before you get started, it might be helpful to read this article about how Timeline affects aspects of your Payvment store, and what steps we’re taking to make Timeline work for you and your brand. You can also take a look at our tutorial on best practices for Timeline specific to your Payvment store.

And the top 7 things you can do right now to get your page ready for Timeline are…

  1. Set your cover photo. The cover photo is that big, wide photo at the top – and it’s your best chance to pull people in with pizzazz and creativity. The dimensions for the cover photo are 850 x 315 pixels. You can change it as often as you like, but you need to be sure you’re within the Facebook guidelines for what’s allowed. The guidelines are pretty strict- you’re not allowed to include price or purchase information, contact information, or calls to action like “Like this page!” or “Tell your friends!” If you need some inspiration, check out these excellent examples from Social Fresh or this list from AGBeat.
  2. Set your profile photo. Your profile photo is the one that already appears in people’s news feeds, next to updates, and in ads. Usually the best choice is a logo. Ideally you should pick an image that’s 180 x 180 pixels – but make sure it still looks good when it’s scaled down to the 32 x 32 pixel size that shows up in news feeds.
  3. Organize your apps. At the top right of the Timeline, you’ll see four boxes showing your photos, apps, and likes. Photos automatically take up the first spot–and for now, you can’t change that. But you can rearrange the remaining slots to your advantage. We recommend putting your “Shop Now” app second, after the photos. All in all, you can have four apps showing all the time and twelve total apps. You can customize the order by using the “Manage” and “Edit Page” selections in the Admin panel up top.
  4. Learn how to star it – hide it – pin it. Timeline offers an opportunity to modify how your page content is seen over time. If you hover over stories, you can hide them, star them, delete them, or make them wider. What’s more, you can “pin” an item to the top of the Timeline for as long as a week. This might be a good idea if you have a Payvment poll going, a featured deal or promotion, or anything else you want to highlight. It will stay above any more recent updates as long as it’s pinned to the top.
  5. Try out the Admin panel. The new admin panel is up at the top of your page, and you can show or hide it as you wish. It’s a great resource for quickly scanning new comments, likes, and Insights. You can also create new ads from the panel.
  6. Get familiar with the new “Messages” feature. Messages is a totally new feature that brands can use which allows fans to send personal messages to page admins. This makes it much easier to have private conversations without moving over to email. We highly recommend you leave messages on, but if you wish to turn off the capability you can go to the Admin panel, choose “Manage” then “Edit Page” and go to “Manage Permissions” and uncheck the “Messages” box.
  7. Mark your Milestones. Timeline enables you to add “Milestones” to your page to let fans know a little bit about your history, accomplishments, and so forth. Milestone images are 843 x 403 pixels. You might want to create a milestone for the date your company was founded, your first sale, or what have you. This can personalize the experience for your fans and help them get to know your business better.

How do you plan to take advantage of Timeline’s new features to grow your brand? Let us know in the comments!

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Infographic: Small Businesses Get Serious about Facebook Commerce

Posted on March 13, 2012

We recently surveyed our pool of over 100,000 sellers about Facebook Commerce and today we are sharing the results. The data show how Payvment sellers, the majority of whom are small businesses with fewer than 500 Facebook fans, are marketing their businesses using Facebook ads and numerous social channels. Check out the infographic below for the highlights of the survey.

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New Poll Features Increase Visibility and Effectiveness

Posted on March 8, 2012

We are excited to announce improvements to our Payvment Polls that integrate well with the new Facebook Timeline Pages for business. The new features greatly improve poll visibility, encourage viral sharing and engagement, and drive more traffic to your stores, without requiring any additional work on your part!

Polls are still a great interactive voting experience, but now they are much more visible to shoppers. Instead of appearing as a post on your store wall only when sellers promote them, Polls appear above and below the products in your store all the time as a constant reminder to participate.

Polls Banner Image

The new top banner (pictured above) invites the shopper to “Vote Now!” and displays how many shoppers have already voted. Clicking on the banner takes the shopper to the voting screen, or shows the results if he or she has already voted. This constant reminder to vote in the poll spurs shoppers to engage without requiring any further action from you.

In addition to showing the poll, the top banner now shows the “Like” Discount if the shopper has “Liked” the page (see screenshot below). Otherwise, it encourages the shopper to Like the page and receive the discount. The display continuously alternates the “Like” discount and Poll banners to expose shoppers to both messages.

Polls were often buried beneath other Wall posts in the past, but now they will have their own tab below the products as well as the banner above (see screenshot below). Placing both the polls and the “Like” discount in prominent locations where shoppers will see them ensures visibility and more activity.

This tab shows all the past polls, allowing shoppers to easily access past polls, see how many other shoppers voted and catch up on older polls they might have missed. Facebook users love simple opportunities to engage like these when they are easy to discover. The Polls tab also makes it easy to Like and Share the polls, creating further opportunities for exposure beyond the existing fan base.

Learn how to create a poll with our step-by-step guide on creating and launching polls on your storefront and start taking advantage of these new features!

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Seller Spotlight: BucketFeet

Posted on March 5, 2012

Today we shine the Seller Spotlight on BucketFeet, a socially responsible shoe brand started by two friends who met while volunteering in Argentina. They give a portion of all proceeds from their artist-designed kicks to various charitable organizations. BucketFeet does a great job of keeping up an active and engaged Facebook page, too. We asked CEO and Co-Founder Raaja Nemani to share a little bit about his experience with Payvment.

BucketFeet is the latest in our occasional series featuring in-depth interviews with sellers. If you’re interested in being spotlighted, email us at community@payvment.com with a short note about your business and your experience with Payvment.

Please give us a quick overview of your company background, and how you got started.

BucketFeet is Artist Designed Footwear.  The company was started when Aaron and I met volunteering in Argentina while backpacking around the world.  Aaron has a custom shoe design business, that we decided to take to the next level.  We were inspired by a photo project Aaron did with street artists from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and decided to start a brand that allowed talented artists to connect with consumers through footwear or wearable art.

What types of products do you sell? How do you choose them?

We sell unisex and mens and womens canvas slip-ons and lace-ups.  We work with super talented artists from around the world, and choose to sell only high quality products.

How did you find Payvment?

Through a friend.

How has Payvment helped complement the social media activity you were already doing?

It’s allowed us to create an easy avenue for our Facebook fans to interact with us through social media and also purchase our product without ever leaving our fan page.

What tips or tricks would you share with someone who’s just starting to sell through Payvment?

We’re just starting out ourselves, but I think it’s essential to offer deals and special products to your Facebook fans that they could not get elsewhere.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Buy BucketFeet and support artists!

For a great in-depth look at BucketFeet, we recommend this video from NBC’s FirstLook series.

Thanks to BucketFeet for taking the time to share their story! You can visit their Payvment Store here. If you’re interested in being spotlighted, send an email to community@payvment.comwith a description of your business and your experience with Payvment.




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