Social Networking Blows Away Small E-Commerce Site
Written by Evan SchumanThere have been quite a few arguments about the many difficult-to-track ways that social networking sites can impact E-Commerce. But a small musical DVD sales site has discovered the devestating potential a video site coupled with social networking can have.
The two-employee a-cappella.com was deluged with requests for an old DVD when a YouTube copy of the video–which had been lying dormant on YouTube for almost a year–suddenly started getting 400,000 daily views. Seems that a-cappella.com was the only merchant to have the video for sale, according to this Internet Retailer story.
The idea of a major site referencing a tiny E-Commerce outfit and sending orders skyhigh on an item is not in-and-of-itself new. The twist here is the mystery of what caused the video to suddenly go from dormant to dynamite. Given that the video had long been on YouTube, the spark was likely a social media discussion that happened to reference the YouTube URL.
"It had been up there for close to a year, so there’s no telling who started e-mailing the link to friends and how it suddenly became so popular," A-cappella President Doug Gray told the publication. "We’ve all tried to figure it out, but I don’t think we’ll ever know what started it."
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
