The Dish on Lish, New Product Discovery Site from Payvment [screenshots]

by Paul Chaney
in Social
— 14 Aug, 2012

Social commerce platform provider Payvment today introduced the beta release of Lish.com, a new product discovery destination that lets people shop what’s trending across the social web.

Lish delivers a real-time feed of trending products from Payvment’s Facebook shopping mall. Feedback from the shopper community promotes the items featured on Lish from among more than four million unique products offered by Payvment’s seller network. The stream is constantly updated as new information is fed into it based on what’s trending in the mall.

According to Payvment CEO Jim Stoneham, the Facebook shopping mall was a “lab for experimentation” that served as a source for gathering information about shopper behavior within Facebook. “We experimented with different mechanisms and shopping techniques, and Lish is culmination of what was learned,” he said. (UPDATE: Now that Lish is live, Payvment is redirecting traffic from the shopping mall over to it.)

One particular finding was that most shoppers only purchased a single product, and that the average purchase price was just $25. The company also found that 90 percent of clicks came from trending products area. Payvment interpreted the data to mean that purchases were driven largely by impulse. It was that understanding that formed the design approach for Lish.

“Lish.com recreates the serendipitous discovery and impulse buying experience that makes shopping in the real world so much fun,” said Stoneham. “We feel this (impulse purchasing) is an untapped opportunity that meshes nicely with social discovery.”

Unlike Payvment’s current product, which resides completely inside Facebook, Lish is a self-standing dot com site. When asked why the decision was made to create a site outside the Facebook firewall, Stoneham cited two reasons: “Our merchants were getting referrals from non Facebook sources such as Pinterest, and it was unnatural to go to a Facebook environment to facilitate the shopping process. Second, mobile technology was a major influence in the development of Lish, and the Facebook mobile experience was less than optimum.”

According to Stoneham, Lish is designed primarily with mobile in mind and works just as well on a smartphone or tablet as it does on a desktop or laptop computer.

Lish.com features include:

A real-time view of products trending across the social web: the Lish.com experience showcases the most popular items on Facebook and Twitter based on continuous community feedback.
New emoticons that drive social interactions: shoppers can react to products with a “smiley-face,” a “meh-face,” or a “frowny-face.” These reactions drive which items get featured on Lish and encourage discovery with friends, fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
One-click purchasing: the Lish buying process has been drastically simplified for discovery and impulse buying on both mobile devices and the web.

Payvment has been a harbinger of f-commerce and social commerce innovation of which Lish is the latest in a series of new developments. In June, Payvment launched one-click Facebook Ads to enable sellers to turn their promotional posts into targeted Facebook Ads. In February, the company launched Social IQ, a “Social Marketing Expert-in-a-Box,” which promotes optimal social media activities that boost sales and shopper engagement with Facebook sellers and their products.

If what Stoneham says is true, I think Lish may be “delish” and am anxious to give the site a run for its money. Surely I can find $25 lying around here somewhere.

By the way, I have some invitations available, in case you’d like to give Lish a try.