Share button for stores

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Today we are following up yesterday’s launch of “embed on blog” with a really cool feature for store owners, our new Share button.

By default, our share button appears as a tab on the right edge of the page that slides out on mouse over. But it can be also easily be displayed as a regular button or customized to match the look and feel of the store. This is what is looks like:

Why use it?

So why should you use our share button instead of another alternative? Well, to add a “social dimension” to stores today, the most common approach is to add a Facebook Like button. Let’s take a look at how that works.

The Facebook Like
As you can see, The Facebook like is very simple, a strength in itself but also a very limiting factor. A “like” accomplishes three things when put on a product page: 1. some exposure on the visitors Facebook timeline, 2. some traffic from the friends of the visitor and 3. social proof from a higher “like count” for the product.

This is all fine when it comes to articles on blogs and other media content. However, when it comes to shopping we think this is way to limiting. To solve this, we have tried to create the best share functionality for online stores, with a lot more functionality focused on shopping.

Let’s take a look at how our approach compare to that of the more generic Facebook Like.

The Helishopter Share

  1. Additional exposure = more traffic
    By default, every post is still posted to the users Facebook Timeline, just as with a like. But the post is also added to the users Helishopter profile, which means that it will get indexed by Google and included in the weekly e-mail sent to all the followers of the user.
  2. The visitor is converted into a follower
    Every product share results in the user following the store, and will get all the stores future updates in their Helishopter feed and weekly e-mail updates.
  3. Product relationships are key
    By knowing if the product is something the user wants, already have or is considering to buy,  we can unlock specific functionality that assist the user with her/his shopping. For instance, a product is posted as “I want this”, we will soon monitor the store for price changes and automatically alert the user when it goes on sale.
  4. Great for the store, even Better for the user
    Our main mission is to help our users to make the best purchases possible. But in the process, we are creating a tool that is very valuable to store owners as well.

Get started

Eager to try out the Helishopter Share on your own store?
Just download our hs-sharebutton.js, put in on your web host and code away. There is a short manual in the top of the file with easy to use cut-and-paste examples that you can use right away.

New Embed on Blog

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It’s been a while since we posted something on our blog, but we have been making great progress with the development of our service. One thing that we have worked on is an improved “embed on blog” feature, which we are releasing today.

Great for bloggers

We think this will be a great tool for bloggers and other web publishers. Let’s take fashion bloggers as an example. Many people cut and paste product pictures in photoshop to combine products they like into a single collage.

The old way
Perhaps you have seen pictures like this on a blog?

The downsides of this approach are:

  1. You can’t easily see which product is which when the name is given below the picture
  2. You can’t link each individual product directly to a place where you can buy it
  3. It’s tedious

The better way
Our new “embed on blog feature” takes this concept and allows you to create better product collages easier. This is what it looks like:



Accessories by Fredrik af Klercker at helishopter.com, the social shopping list.

Try moving your mouse pointer over the products, or if your on an iPad just touch one of them.

Creating a collage like this is easy. Just add stuff to a Helishopter list and the collage will be automatically generated with all product links kept intact. The only thing left to do is to copy and paste some html to embed it on a blog post with all our social features added for free.

Even better for affiliates

If you are a registered affiliate with a store Helishopter is the perfect place for you to spread your affiliate links. When things from your list are reposted into another Helishopter list and ends up on Facebook, sent as en e-mail suggestion or embedded into another blog, your links will by default be kept intact. This way they will generate more revenue for you than ever with even less effort than before.

Another example

While we are demonstrating our new embed feature, we want to take the opportunity to share a list of great books that Seth Godin recommended recently. Feel free to repost some of them to your own Helishopter profile.


Seth Godin Recommended by Helishopter Top lists at helishopter.com, the social shopping list.

How to do it

Embedding an Helishopter list is easy. This is how you do it:

New November features

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We silently launched our public beta a couple of weeks ago when, we activated the accounts of the people on our waiting list. The feedback from our beta user have been overwhelmingly positive and we are now very happy that we are starting to see some organic growth already!

Since our initial public beta release we have introduced some new features and improvements for you to check out:

Bookmarklet
You can now use our handy bookmarklet to quickly add things to your Helishopter profile when browsing stores. Go to helishopter.com/goodies and add it to your browser right away.

Add custom image when posting
If we fail to identify the correct image for you when posting, you can now specify the URL of the image you want to use.

Suggest to friend
You can now send a suggestion to a friend when posting or reposting. You can choose to send to an e-mail address or to one of your Helishopter or Facebook friends.

Speed
In some browsers helishopter was very slow. This has improved significantly since our initial release and it is now a lot faster but it will still improve a lot within the next few months.

Mobile site
The first limited version of a mobile site is now ready. You can now browse all profiles easily from any mobile browser. Great when you receive an e-mail notification on your iPhone.

Support/Feedback community
Several of our users requested a way to get in touch with us to give feedback besides e-mailing us. To address that wish we have integrated with getsatisfaction.com and added their support widget. Now if there is anything you want to ask us or suggest you can just click on the “Feedback” tab on the right side of the page.

Helishopter loves you
Finally, we know that Helishopter is nothing without it’s users and all your feedback is incredible valuable too us. Please keep giving us suggestions on how we can improve!

Public beta launch imminent

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The private beta of Helishopter is progressing nicely and we are proud to announce that the public beta of Helishopter will begin in October.

Are you ready?
If you want to prepare for the launch you can prepare by starting to build you following right now. Just create your account at http://helishopter.com and then send the link to your profile to your friends and fans. Everyone that signs up using your profile page will instantly be a follower of yours.

The first milestones

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Now that we have a blog it’s only proper that we share some behind-the-scenes-moments with you, so here are Helishopter’s two first major milestones from Q1 2011:

Jan & Andreas formalizing their collaboration with Helishopter.

Jan Dinkelspiel & Andreas Hassellöf

 

Emil, code-monkey extraordinarie, becomes Helishopters first FTE and celebrates with Andreas and Gustav.

Emil Stenqvist, Andreas Hassellöf & Gustav Mårtensson

Helishopter, the story

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This is the first post to our new blog with an update to tell you that the Helishopter private beta is progressing nicely and that we are working hard to launch our public beta in October.

Till then, we think you deserve to get some background info to the Helishopter story, our story.

Where it all began

The idea
It started off in a very different direction where we talked about consumer insight websites and the fact that they are focused on product reviews rather than the person giving the actual review. Who cares what I think about a camera if I know zip nada about photography? Who cares what I think of a computer if the only thing I care about is design? So, the initial idea was to build a consumer insight website built around people rather than products. But we scrapped it. Not that the idea was bad but we scrapped it.

Then one of our founders flew to Prague for a long weekend of mind exercise and came back with what was the start of Helishopter. He said:

Reviews and opinions are important, but secondary. Helishopter is about showing who you are by sharing the things you love. There are lots of sites where people collect things, but I would never use any one of them. Lets build something we would actually use ourselves.

From that point on much have happened. The idea has evolved and the functionality has been set. The idea is not revolutionary nor unique, but the execution is. Often we ask ourselves, why has this not been done before.

The name
Helishopter. Silly, sticky… you name it. We like it. At our first brainstorming meeting, where we had no intention of deciding on a name, but we could not help but to play with different words and the name Helishopter came up, one of many. We laughed at the name but for some reason we started using it to refer to the project. And it stuck. So we said – let’s keep it. Helishopter it is.

The people
Although we would like to say that we are thirty people sitting in the SF bay area with Sequoia backing us, that is far from the truth. We are four individuals from Sweden.

  • The Entrepreneur – first company at age of 16, now 29. Ups and downs, now more excited than ever. Works full time at major fashion house to finance his life.
  • The Business Man – telecom and finance. Full of ideas and inspiration. Loves to be part of a start up process, from idea to execution.
  • The Designer – long time friend of the entrepreneur and the one adding flair to the project. When not at Helishopter, free lance photographer.
  • The Code Monkey – the only paid FTE. Brilliant coder, often referred to as the neurologist by the business man. All in all – it’s a small team but with many vital components. Execution, skill, feeling, network…

We believe that we are on to something special. Again, something very simple and something thats pretty much already out there, but in a new exciting package designed to help us share the things we love.

We hope to see you on Helishopter soon.