Facebook officially brought the curtain down on its physical gift business on August 12, 2012, and shifted to digital gift cards. Now, the company is shelving the gift card business as well. The tech giant had been on a campaign to get its right footing on the business of selling items online.
Just like any business, it was understandable that Facebook would contemplate leveraging it large fan base to make more money. Had all gone well, the business would, for sure, rival Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. Unfortunately, for the social media giant, it all ended in a disappointment. The company had to close down its gift card business.
One question that many people are left asking is why Facebook would close doors on what would be considered a ‘budding’ service. The Menlo Park, California, United States-based tech giant must have realized that the gift card business wasn’t getting traction, thus their decision to focus more on promoting other companies to sell on their social network platform.
Why Facebook’s Pulled Down the Gift Card Business:
Gifts Did Not Fit Facebook’s Style
Considering how much of users’ data Facebook has, one would think selling gifts on the platform would be a piece of cake. All that the company would have to do, which they did aggressively, was to give gift suggestions to people, gifts that align with their likes. In this way buying gifts for loved ones would be easy, given that you would almost be sure that the gift would bring the giftee some joy.
Looking at it, the strategy could have worked well, except that people did not view Facebook as a commercial app pushing for its sales. The pushing of gifts was not palatable to the users who have always seen Facebook as an open platform.
Facebook Gift Business Sales Were Low
The gift card business did not sell as much as the company hoped. Surprisingly, few people were ready to spend money on the gifts that Facebook pushed on their friends’ special days. Many people stick to the traditional ways of acknowledging special days – liking, commenting, and sharing. Being the wise investor that Facebook has always been, the only right thing to do was bring this ship to dock.
Shipping
Facebook ran into problems of shipping gifts out of the United States or finding local systems outside the continent to support the business. Since they had no existing operations to preserve their newfound interest, the gift card business would soon find it difficult to penetrate the already established market.
A hurdle they would probably have overcome if the gift card business had lived to its expectation.
Physical Gifts Got Cumbersome
Facebook invested in physical goods with high expectations, but the actual response was so low. The company had to store, keep track of stock and promote their gifts while the sales only accounted for 20%. The only logical thing was to shut it all down.
What’s Next After the Collapse of The Facebook Gift Card Business?
The collapse of the Facebook gift card business doesn’t mean people are no longer interested in sending gifts, right? It, therefore, makes every sense that many internet users are still searching for new ways of sharing gifts with their loved ones. Also, some website owners are keen on including digital gift options on their websites to make it easier for their visitors to buy and send gifts from among their products.
Digital book gifting has grown in popularity over the years, especially because of a growing need by people to learn new skills or add to their treasure of knowledge. If you like cooking, it would be great to learn some of the recipes from some of the chefs you adore, isn’t it? How about someone who’d like to learn some programming language, writing, electrical wiring, and more? It’s rather obvious that gifting any such person a digital book relevant to the skill they would like to learn would appreciate it.
Here is how you can easily set up a website that allows users to gift educational content.
Use LearnDash for Your Setup
LearnDash is a widely used Learning Management System that makes it easier for website owners to sell learning content. Using the LMS, you can quickly transform your WordPress website into a powerful tool to sell courses, monitor progress, and set up digital gifts.
Setting Up a Gifting System Using LearnDash + WooCommerce
WooCommerce is loved by many store owners who set up, sell, and accept payment through their WordPress websites. When combined with LearnDash, the process of selling digital content becomes seamless. Any user can then buy a course or whatever other education product as a gift for someone else. Doing so would, however, require sharing some personal account information to grant access to the giftee.
How about if you would like to make the gifting process seamless and simple to the person purchasing the gift and, in extension, the giftee?
While you would have to scratch your head a bit if you were to go through the setup process on your own, there is a plugin that can make it all nice and easy for you. LearnDash Gift a Course plugin it is. With this plugin, setting up a gifting system is as easy as pie. The plugin makes it effortless to integrate your LearnDash, WooCommerce, and a fully-fledged gifting feature.
If you use LearnDash Gift a Course plugin on your WordPress website, it becomes easier for your website visitors to identify, buy, and share new gifts with their loved ones in very simple steps.
Conclusion
Clearly, this whole LearnDash Gift a Course plugin set up doesn’t throw away Facebook as a social media platform. Your potential customers could still use Facebook or any other social media platform where their loved ones share information about themselves to learn more about them before heading to your website to make a gift purchase. If it’s someone they know already, the whole process becomes even easier.
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