Recently, I have had the pleasure of speaking with Patricia Pepe, retail business owner and vice president of the Internet Merchants Association, after discovering her praise of ShopTab’s ease of use on our Facebook Fan page.

We were thrilled to find out her satisfaction with ShopTab service had surpassed her expectations with ease of use and setup. We wanted to properly thank her by showcasing her background, her business, and a little about why she thinks ShopTab is so great!

First, a bit about Patricia and her business ventures. West Florida Components is an internet retailer that was founded by Patricia in 2004. Its warehouse and offices are located on the west coast of Florida in historic Tarpon Springs. In addition to running West Florida Components, she is the vice president of the Internet Merchants Association a non-profit trade organization. The IMA’s primary focus is to educate eCommerce merchants to help grow their online businesses so we definitely recommend eCommerce Business Owners check out IMA. Patricia is also a frequent speaker on a broad range of topics relating to eCommerce and social media.  You can follow Patricia with West Floria Components on Twitter as well as Internet Merchants Association on Twitter too.

Q: Tell us about West Florida Components.

A: West Florida Components sells electronic components, parts and supplies to electronic technicians, hobbyists, ham radio operators and manufacturers. We stock over 10,000 products in our warehouse ranging from capacitors, diodes, resistors, transistors, LEDS and ICS to solar panels and rubber feet.

Q: What features or benefits make West Florida Components stand out?

A: West Florida Components was launched as an alternative to the large catalog houses and distributors who often require a hefty minimum purchase. From the very beginning, we have never required a minimum purchase and because of that, we attract the electronic hobbyist all the way up to the major manufacturers. We are well-known in the industry because we only advertise what we have on hand. We don’t list other distributor’s inventory on our web site; we list only what we have in our possession and can be shipped out immediately.

In addition to our website (www.westfloridacomponents.com), our products can also be found on eBay, Amazon, and now, on Facebook.

Q: What has your experience been with ShopTab?

A: As someone who has spoken about the merits of using social media to promote a business, I was thrilled to find the ShopTab application for Facebook. ShopTab harnesses the power of social networking in Facebook to help businesses showcase their products right from their Facebook Fan pages.

Q: What features do you like best about ShopTab? Why does it work well with your company?

A: One of the best features of ShopTab is the ease of installation. We had the ShopTab app up and running in literally just a few minutes! The instructions were clear and easy to follow and it took just a minute to tweak our current data feed to make it work for ShopTab. Once our first data feed was imported, we thought there might be a delay before we could view our products on Facebook – we were amazed to click on the tab and find that our store was immediately visible.

Q: How does ShopTab help benefit small business owners?

A: The look and feel of the product page in ShopTab is very clean. The focus is on the products. We like the integrated search and the ability to share a specific product on our wall. We think the price is right. E-commerce sites of all sizes can benefit from using ShopTab to promote their products and their site through Facebook for very little effort and very little cost.

And there you have it! ShopTab is an easy to use and easy to set up Facebook application that helps eCommerce companies capitalize off their presence on social media at a very low cost. We are thrilled to see Patricia’s great success with ShopTab through West Florida Components and anxiously anticipate many similar success stories in the future.

Make sure to check out West Florida Components at http://www.westfloridacomponents.com as well as their ShopTab on Facebook.

Please leave any comments or questions about West Florida Components, ShopTab or your own business below or on the ShopTab Facebook Application page.