Desmo Encourages Altruism Through E-Commerce Purchases

Desmo is an online funding and customer loyalty platform that allows e-commerce companies and consumers to act altruistically by donating a share of purchases. The process is easily integrated into the e-commerce “thank you” page that is completed after every transactoin, and donors can share their support of the non-profit through social sharing features that also highlight the e-commerce platform.

The company’s latest product mixes this altruism with items on a discount, by allowing part of the discount to be a donation to charity.

Desmo has been picking up steam lately. They were featured on the Wired Top 100 European Startups list, and garnered a decent share of votes in our Arctic15 startup competition.

But more importantly, Desmo has now partnered with one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the nordics, CDON.com. “This is one step on our quest to become the facto standard for all e-commerce, meaning a better and more socially conscious shopping experience online,” says Jens Hagman, co-founder and CMO of Desmo.

Now if you’re an e-commerce platform, you might be saying to yourself, “Altruism sounds nice, but what’s in it for me?”

Desmo claims that if consumers are given the opportunity to donate to charity through their purchases, then they act more loyalty to that e-commerce platform, and they’ll talk about it to their friends. The company claims that Desmo donors shop 32% more than non-donors. “This allows the company to see social responsibility as a market driven activity,” says Desmo in a press releases.

Desmo is already live in Sweden, and they tell us they are looking at entering the U.S. market. I’m not too familiar with the e-commerce donations area, but their concept sounds similar to U.S.-based SocialVest, which we touched on after Flattr partnered with it last April.

Their demo widget can be found here.