Welcome to another edition of Miva Merchant Ecommerce News. Today, we’ll take a look at much-anticipated launch of Facebook Timeline, and find out why tomorrow’s fourth-annual Free Shipping Day is significant for merchant profits as well as customer wallets.
After a long wait, and some litigation, Facebook officially launched their biggest redesign to date: Timeline, this morning.
Although certain people have had access to the new profile format for a few months now, everyone can now access it, either by going to the Introducing Timeline page and clicking “Get It Now” or by waiting until the option appears on their profile page.
While many are impressed by the visually-arresting layout, some Facebook users have expressed concerns about exactly how far back their timeline will go, and whether it may reveal photos and status updates that users would just as soon forget.
In response, Facebook has said that it will allow users to review their timelines for seven days before making them public.
So far, only Facebook profiles have the ability to switch to Timeline, and it is not clear when or if Facebook will make the new layout available for Brand Pages in the future.
Tomorrow, December 16th, is Free Shipping Day, a day when participating retailers will offer (you guessed it) free shipping to their customers.
The fourth-annual event is expected to include more than 2,300 merchants, and shoppers who take advantage of the free shipping deal will also be guaranteed delivery of their purchases by Christmas Eve.
FreeShipping.org, the site responsible for organizing the promotion, says that online retail sales during last year’s Free Shipping Day totaled $942 million.