[man_bear_pig]

Amazing feedback. Thank you so much.

1. social commerce sites typically have a fraction of the conversion rates to normal e-commerce sites. e-mail re-engagement is very effective for return visits. even a simple best of the week gets high open/click through rates. I do agree with you right off the bat is not ideal. However, given the space I play in, I cannot be in the etsy transaction phase to get sign ups --> see fancy (they now have 10m users - what is your opinion of their strategy)? when i showed the first click through page for 10 seconds , my bounce rate dropped to 60% from 70%. do you know what i should be shooting for?

2. great. thanks for the insight. will do.

3. what's interesting is that i have the email sign up option but i guess it's not clear enough. only thing is fb is great from a social user acquisition standpoint. there's embedded virality aspects within the site such as collection and commenting that works great in acquiring super targeted users (their friends). 70/30 of our users opt with the facebook sign up. but you seem to say that we should make email sign up much more prominent bc sign up is better than no sign up. maybe like a wanelo.com look? do you know the efficacy of having google+ / twitter as well or stick to the most effective one on my platform and then just give email.

i'm not in the flash sale business. i'm in the discovery commerce business (what i want to do is create a platform for local retailers to properly market their products/stores without having to get into a groupon scenario to get discovered. gilt/fab naturally has to move toward a marketplace concept because of growth and market conditions: need to move bigger amount of inventory and in a booming stock market scenario, inventory with good deals is not that readily available.

thanks again so much for your comments and i hope to incorporate a lot of the changes as fast as possible. btw do you know anyone who is a pro tablet/mobile/cross browser interface guy that can make my site usable in other states than just laptop on chrome/firefox? my guys do not have that experience.

also if you would like please use the username: [e-mail] password: guest to peruse the site.

your feedback has been super helpful so far.

[bbissoon]

GILT originally had the same approach but changed it as curiosity grew. By locking out purchasing to registered users only - my wording was vague. Allow users to see what you have, even if it's faded out with a box above showing users how to gain access to what they see behind the "Registration Wall." GILT did this best.

3. I didn't see it. Using lazy registration is better viewed through the lens of "What information can I use to grow." With Google+ , Twitter - what information does it give you to help you grow?

Facebook gives you a large amount of information about the user, their connections and more - but the network isn't as hip as it once was - therefore, make both forms of registration equally accessible. - Promote connecting with Facebook after registration for those who chose not to in the beginning. Show the benefits such as connecting with friends, showing what's popular etc to help. Also, beware of relying on facebook data as email address are now "@facebook.com" by default and others have unreachable college email address. Give them the option to change their email address while keeping their Facebook UserID intact.

I'm a designer/developer. My email is in my bio, if you need help just hit me up.