TurnTo Unveils Next-Generation Social Commerce Suite for Online Retailers

NEW YORK, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- TurnTo Networks, a leader in onsite social shopping, today introduced the TurnTo Social Commerce Suite, providing online sellers with next-generation social shopping tools that leverage social networks and customer transaction data to drive sales while protecting shopper privacy.  The Social Commerce Suite includes TurnTo Social Merchandising, now coming out of beta and adding a broad range of new features, and TurnTo Social Purchase Sharing, a newly introduced member of the TurnTo lineup.

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Based on input from shoppers and merchants gathered during its successful year-long beta phase with more than 35 innovative online stores, the Social Commerce Suite was built from the ground up specifically to meet the needs of online retailers.  The applications provide data control, privacy, and bottom-line results that go beyond generic social plug-ins. The TurnTo Social Commerce Suite also taps into real-world relationships to build direct connections between shoppers – social commerce 2.0 functions that represent the next step after first-generation social tools like customer reviews.

"TurnTo continues to push the envelope in social commerce, and from what we've already seen we are very excited to be among the first to bring this set of next-generation features to our site," said Tom Frenchu of TABcom, LLC.  "We have been very successful with TurnTo but feel we've only scratched the surface of its true power and capability. Companies are scrambling to unlock the financial power of social networking and it's clear that TurnTo has done its homework in driving social commerce forward while still exhausting all measures to protect the privacy of shoppers."

"The TurnTo Suite is a tremendous step forward in building trust between our shoppers and our brand while respecting their privacy along the way," said Chaim Posen, JomaShop.com.  "Through this release, TurnTo is filling a void in the social commerce space that until very recently was only focused on reviews and ratings from strangers."

TurnTo Social Merchandising runs directly on a merchant's site, showing shoppers what their friends have purchased there.  Online retailers who have already installed the beta version of TurnTo Social Merchandising have reported increased conversion rates, order size, and repeat purchases. As this product exits beta, TurnTo is introducing numerous enhancements, including:

• New levels of personalization
• Engaging new designs for product display
• Simplified friend-connection and opt-in sharing models
• Scalability to handle the largest purchase data sets while meeting the response time requirements of the most demanding sites
• API-based access to friend lists and news story publishing through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Mac and others

With TurnTo Social Purchase Sharing online retailers can now engage customers at the very last stage of making their purchase. Built into the order confirmation page of e-retail sites, TurnTo Social Purchase Sharing provides powerful tools to encourage buyers to share the news of their purchases with their friends on various social networks.  As social networks develop into a primary traffic source for e-commerce leaders, Social Purchase Sharing allows stores to effectively utilize the power of this channel.  Designed as an easy to implement solution for online retailers, TurnTo Social Purchase Sharing puts stores, rather than third-party social networking sites, in control of its customers' data.

"The introduction of the TurnTo Social Commerce Suite represents a significant milestone in the evolution of social commerce," said George Eberstadt, CEO of TurnTo Networks.  "Through the TurnTo Suite, online retailers can now tap into the social power of their full customer base while at the same time addressing privacy requirements.  It's good for shoppers, and it's good for merchants' bottom lines." 

The TurnTo Suite will be generally available to online stores in the beginning of Q3 2010.

About TurnTo

TurnTo provides Onsite Social Shopping applications for online merchants.  TurnTo enables online stores to turn their entire customer base into references for friends and other shoppers, driving higher conversion rates, average order values, and repeat purchases.  TurnTo provides a powerful way to take advantage of the Facebook Open Graph and also supports other top social networks and email systems.  Internet Retailer 500 companies, including TABcom (Dog.com), CompUPlus, and Jomashop, use TurnTo's onsite social shopping to convert visitors into buyers; the conversion rate of shoppers who use TurnTo is 2-4 times higher than it is for those who don't.  TurnTo is a white-labeled, SaaS offering that can be integrated in a few hours. More information about TurnTo and its partner sites is available at www.turntonetworks.com.

SOURCE TurnTo Networks