Nordstrom Will Lure Teens With Social Shopping on TVs

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Nordstrom is betting hard on digital retail startups. Just after news broke that BaubleBar jewelry will be carried inside all 117 Nordstrom US locations, the company announced that it will be integrating its Wanelo page (to be displayed on screens) in the juniors' section of 107 of its physical stores.

Social shopping site Wanelo operates similar to product aggregator sites like Polyvore or Svpply except it's even more focused on commerce. The approach is catching on—Nordstrom has over 1.2 million followers on Wanelo who are actively engaged with the brand. There have been more than 200,000 products uploaded to Nordstrom's page since the company became active on the site, which totals to around 30 million product saves or an average of 343 saves per item. It's similar to a Pinterest set up but, for Nordstrom, Wanelo is much more effective in terms of user engagement.

One of the biggest problems with brands reaching out to consumers across social media platforms is the virtually non-existent return on investment. Wanelo, however, doesn't have that problem.

With 2.7 million followers on Wanelo, Urban Outfitters has more of a presence there then on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest combined. The Wanelo social button installed on UrbanOutfitters.com product pages resulted in a 40% increase in UO product saves on Wanelo and a 20% increase in Wanelo-driven sales for the company.

UO executive Steve Hartman told WWD that Wanelo's conversion rate on the site is more than four times higher than any other UO social platform. It's also in the top 10 sources of traffic for UO.com. In comparison: last year it was reported that Twitter was responsible for a mere 0.09% to 0.19% of traffic from the average brand's Twitter page to their site.

Even brands with less than half of UO's Wanelo following are reaping the benefits of the site. Farfetch reports a Wanelo conversion rate that is 5x higher then that of their Pinterest following. Sephora disclosed that 95% of the traffic it gets from Wanelo users goes to its mobile platform, causing the company to regard Wanelo as a new potential tool for driving traffic and sales, especially on mobile. Lululemon reported that Wanelo drives 6% of social referrals to lululemon.com and is the third-largest social platform for the brand.

Wanelo founder Deena Varshavskaya credits the site's success to its dedicated focus to just shopping and nothing else. "Imagine going to Amazon or Urban Outfitters' [Web site] and starting to see photos of recipes and landscapes side by side with products," Varshavskaya told WWD. "That would create a really confusing shopping experience."

· Nordstrom Taps Tech, Brings Wanelo In-store [WWD]
· Wanelo Wants to Crush the Category of Social Shopping [Racked]
· Meet Dreamcliq, the Pinterest of Dating Sites [Racked]