The future of online retail may not be online retail at all – it might just be the social media or even geo-social layers that add the most value to the user experience.

When the team at Converse Australia launched their Facebook page in March 2010, the intention was to create a platform to speak directly to the sector of their customer base that is highly active in social media. This strategy is borne out by some recent figures from the US:

Facebook users online spend – US$67 per quarter

Non-Facebook users online spend – US$27 per quarter

Twitter users online spend – US$75 per quarter

Average online spend across all internet users – US$50 per quarter

Their Facebook fan count now tops 34,000, so it’s clear that Converse has very successfully moved their brand into the social media space. They have also embraced geo-social, and can assist their customers in real-time by guiding them to stores stocking a particular product they’re interested in.

With more than 500 million Facebook users worldwide, incorporating Facebook integration into an online retail marketing plan should almost be a given. In fact, some brands are seeing Facebook fans growing rapidly as traffic to their brand website drops. Coca-Cola is one, with Facebook fan numbers growing past 10.7m while their brand website traffic dropped 40%.

These kinds of numbers are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, but what’s important is that the shift in retail mentality towards social media (and geo-social services) and away from traditional customer service methods such as in-store, phone and email is likely to continue, and thinking about how your business is going to embrace social media as a communication medium is increasingly important.