How do I add Facebook “like” buttons to my online store?

There’s been some really big news on the eCommerce front recently, driven by none other than Facebook.

You’ve probably heard about Facebook’s “Open Graph” where Facebook “like” buttons can be placed against all sorts of things, from news articles to products. You can also see which of your friends also “like” things.

It’s an incredible way to personalise your website and for visitors to visualise endorsements from the people they trust the most, their friends and family on Facebook.

Although it’s very new, there have already been some really impressive examples coming to light.

Here’s an example from Levi’s:

When you login to Facebook you will also see your friend’s upcoming birthdays if you visit the Levi’s online store. A lovely connection is made between products, friends and their birthdays. In addition, if one of your friends has also been to the site and they “like” something (as my friend and colleague Stephen Foxworthy has) you’ll see the ‘endorsement’. Or if Steph’s birthday’s coming up, I can buy him something he likes.

In Australia, online retailer Jeanswest has also just implemented Facebook sharing tools. It’s still quite new, so they don’t have as many people “liking” as many of their products as Levi’s has, but of course the numbers will grow as time goes by.

While there’s been some talk that people are deleting their Facebook accounts in droves, Facebook still has an impressive 8.8 million people who regularly login and interact.

Rather than having me go into minute detail showing you how to add Facebook like buttons to your eCommerce store (or anything else for that matter), visit Facebook’s developer section for easy to implement instructions.

I think these features will help drive higher conversion rates within your store, and more importantly, position you perfectly to benefit from Facebook Credits as it rolls out more and more.

The rumour going around is that Facebook Credits is about to take on PayPal as an online payment mechanism. Currently it’s a form of virtual currency mainly used to buy credits for online games, etc.

But given that Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal) sits on Facebook’s board of Directors, you could argue he’s probably the guy to get Facebook payments to fly.

Actually, he’s there because he took a punt and bought a 10.2% stake in the company back in 2004 for $500,000.

Microsoft paid $240 million in 2007 for just 1.6% of the company, so Peter’s pretty shrewd (or lucky… or both).

The game’s changed again.

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Chris Thomas heads up Reseo, a search engine optimisation  company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.