Will the Facebook Fan Page make websites obsolete?
This is a topic I touched on before but I feel is worth exploring again.
I have lots of friends and business associates who are a lot smarter than I am, and thankfully one of them is Sonali Shetty of Compleo Apps. We partner with Sonali and her business partner Paul Spicer on social media projects because their firm brings our collective ideas to life.
One such idea was for National Harbor. In an effort to enhance the destination’s Facebook Fan Page landing page, Sonali suggested designing a page that mirrored the clients web site, cool huh?
Not only does it mirror the website, but it includes easy-to-update links that our staff can change without too much fuss. This allows us to drive fans to information on seasonal events, rotate links to retailers and restaurants, and provide information about special offers.
So of course that gets a marketer thinking. If I can do this on Facebook and it is that easy, why do I need a website. And then Sonali tells me about companies that are actually building in transactional elements (that means they can directly sell you stuff) into their Facebook Fan pages, and my mind goes racing.
Here are the advantages as I see them:
- Ease: If I can easily update the content, why do I need a third party that takes a long time to update my website content.
- Community: Web pages are one-way and static. Fan pages are two-way and provide platforms for feedback.
- Cost: Without giving away trade secrets, the cost of creating and updating Facebook pages has been less than the cost of creating and updating web pages.
- “They” are already on Facebook: The “they” is more than 325-million people who currently are active Facebook users.
- Viral: Remember every time you update your Fan page, you fans see it. And they can pass it along to their friends. Don’t your wish your website can do that?
Am I missing anything here? Seems like a no-brainer. If you’ve seen those cool Honda commercials that includes the company’s Facebook address, here’s the Honda example of a landing page.
Maybe I’m not so crazy after all. Comments?
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About Jon Newman
Jon is a partner of The Hodges Partnership, a public relations firm in Richmond, VA, where he lives with his wife Kyra and his children Sarah and Zack.
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I completely agree that Facebook is able to connect and update “they” better than traditional homepages for organizations, but I also see a flip side to that. While Facebook is more readily updatable, I feel that traditional homepages have a sense of creditability Facebook pages do not. When an organization has a well put together “.com” site, I’m more likely to tune in to their message than a well put together Facebook page.
I think it’s awsome, but not a good business decision. It adds an extra layer someone will have to go through in order to find info. Most people won’t fish around on Facebook for this. Better to bring Facebook to your website with Connect.
Mike,
It’s only an extra layer if you don’t use other media to publicize the FB URL. If you treat that URL like your regular website URL you avoid the “layer” issue.
Jon
Interesting idea. I’ve seen some companies host their entire site on YouTube (http://www.booneoakley.com) and other social media sites, but I can think of more than a few reasons why companies shouldn’t move EVERYTHING into FB:
1. Despite FB’s huge popularity (currently), there are still tons of people that don’t use it and would never be exposed to a fan page.
2. Far more people use traditional search engines, which aren’t as good at finding FB content (or even allowed to in some cases).
3. FB pages are much harder to optimize for search engines and afford less control over “on-site” factors.
4. Links from other websites pointed at a FB page only benefit FB, thanks to the PageRank “Black Hole” effect. PageRank goes in but it never comes out.
5. Sites hosted on FB are subject to their TOS, policies, and politics. Any of these can change at any time, and companies have little or no recourse.
6. It’s never good to put all of one’s eggs in one basket.
I like FB pages for certain things, but would never feel comfortable if my whole web presence relied on this many factors that are outside of my control.
Yes, I know I have issues with delegating …
Andrew,
Great points. My sense is that if more orgs/cos. followed this route. Facebook would make it easier for them to do so. They may even charge a little for it but still make it more cost-effective that traditional web development.
Jon
Perhaps FB will add more site building tools, but I’m afraid we’d end up with another Geocities or Google Sites: useful for only the bottom of the market that needs a free or cheap website (i.e. crap). That’s probably not where FB wants to go and wouldn’t pose a significant threat to traditional web designers/developers.
I agree with Mike Nelson’s point about integrating FB Connect with a “traditional” website. It adds the core social features without giving up control over the technology and infrastructure. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
This seems like quite the stretch. Andrew did a good job of outlining some reasons why someone might not want to do this so I’ll avoid those topics.
It also seems one of your other key points is ease of updating. I would say if that’s currently a problem, then you should find a service provider capable of helping you solve that problem. There are plenty of great, and extremely easy to use, CMS platforms out there right now. They also carry the benefit that you remain in ownership/control of your content and policies.
In this era of everyone’s a publisher, Facebook is a super way to engage your audience in real-time, two-way conversations. It will continue to grow in popularity. However, the point Andrew made about search is right on. Recent emarketer.com data point — Search accounts for 97.8 percent share — top referring website categories. Social was second at 0.5 percent.
Definitely an interesting idea.
I don’t think it will ever happen for content-based organizations that in any way depend on ad dollars on their site — there’s just no way an exec with several million in ad revenue just decides to toss it for a Facebook page with limited ad potential. For most industries, in fact, owned web properties have far too much value to give up.
That being said, small businesses, especially retailers looking to get exposure, could do wonders setting up a virtual storefront on Facebook, similar to what Best Buy is beginning to do. Not only are you always going to be ‘where your customers are’ online, but the ability for any businesses to sell directly on Facebook, without forcing potential buyers to click out to any other website, is a potential gold mine. It’s the ultimate in shortening the sales cycle.
Other than retail, I can’t foresee it happening for businesses any time soon.