Retailer Urban Outfitters has made the Facebook Like button central to the way the company is marketing its products online. Visitors to the Urban Outfitters web site are now greeting by a large thumbs up asking them to “See our most Liked items.”

The company had installed the Like button by its products on the company web site and this new feature is essentially a grouping of the most Liked items into one place. These items — which include men’s and women’s clothing, as well as home items — are then grouped into a special section promoted on their web site.

So far more than 313,000 Like Urban Outfitters on Facebook, where the company does promote its company web site. Exclusive offers for Facebook fans are also offered and the company shares new merchandise with photos often with fans as well.

As previously mentioned, the fact that Urban Outfitters is using Facebook’s marketing tools to market its own products is inventive. It assumes that people visiting the company web site will still consider Facebook Likes as social recommendations when they’re shopping online. So the Like button is being used as a way to market products in its own right, instead of simply spreading the word about them.

For more about innovative uses of Facebook’s social plugins check out our premium service, Inside Facebook Gold.