Social Shopping: The Future of eCommerce Retailers

Social media shopping is a new and emerging trend in the field of eCommerce business. It is gaining traction every day and slowly becoming a trend in the online shopping business.

It is a process of sharing the shopping experience with a social network of friends and contacts. It gives the users an opportunity to share, suggest, recommend and comment on products or services.

The idea behind this social shopping platform is that individuals are influenced by what their friends would purchase or recommend.

Shopping has always been a social experience and social commerce is trying to combine business with a social outlook.

  • Facebook Social Commerce

Facebook is, without a doubt, a giant social media enterprise. They do have a huge potential audience that can be leveraged for social commerce.

It is one of the most influential social networks when it comes to customer buying habits. More than 35 percent of the consumers surveyed say that Facebook is an important factor in deciding which retailer to patronize.

Facebook Social Commerce

It also has a solid reputation for driving in-store foot traffic. They have also introduced the facebook pay option to shop anything or pay for their services.

The buy button on facebook allows the brands to sell their products to members on facebook without the need for them to leave the platform.

Facebook marketplace is now competing with the likes of Amazon, Google shopping, etc.

  • Instagram Social Commerce

Instagram is definitely one of the most promising platforms when it comes to creating a social selling strategy. Following closely in the footsteps of facebook they have added a buy now button for certain brands.

Instagram Social Commerce

They have implemented some new features like product tags so users can quickly identify the products they see their ads and their prices. Shopify and other big online retailers have opened the way for selling their stuff on Instagram.

They also introduced the go-live option giving brands the ability to tag items in organic posts which, when tapped, brings up a new page which leads to a checkout.

  • Twitter Social Commerce

Twitter has more than 307 million active Twitter accounts, and a demographic breakdown favorable to social shopping. They are trying hard to incorporate the eCommerce component into their regular business.

Twitter Social Commerce

Its most developed experiment recently has been the partnership with Amazon, which allows its users to add items to their Amazon shopping cart just by tweeting #AmazonCart.

They are still working on various innovative measures to expand the social shopping option on their site. Twitter is growing rapidly and even big government announcements are coming out through twitter.

  • Pinterest Social Commerce

Most Pinterest users are quite unique from other consumers on social media. They are also actively looking at specific products from time to time.

The platform is becoming more of a shopping destination than a social shopping network. Since Pinterest users have higher buying intent and don’t mind being advertised to as much as users on other websites.

Pinterest Social Commerce

Pinterest is quickly emerging as a major player in the social media industry. It has experienced a tremendous amount of growth in just a few years. 

According to Pew Research, 15 percent of all Internet users are on Pinterest and almost all are women. Only 5 percent of male Internet users log on, compared to 25 percent of women.

Now that makes more sense why Pinterest is styled much like a typical women’s magazine. It definitely gives women an unprecedented platform to share awesome visual content.

  • Shopee

The social shopping concept is becoming more common among the increasingly interconnected global audience.

In a study, it states that about 71 percent of customers change their mind when they see a favorable review of any product on social media.

Shopee

Shopee encourages the group element of allowing the brands to grow organically by establishing a loyal audience who can further promote and review products with more authenticity and consistency.

  • Kickstarter

This business model is quite unique where the customers not only participate and contribute to the process but also make the entire business possible.

The consumer can directly influence the manufacturing and process systems to get rewarded for their contributions.

Kickstarter

These products are mostly crowdfunded to save on costs and enjoy the benefit of a stronger and loyal customer base.

Using this model Kickstarter has amassed more than 2 billion dollars.

  • Wechat

Wechat is basically a Chinese super app which is also the single largest social network in China. It is also expanding outside China too.

Most of the Wechat users live in china and the platform is also known as Weixin. It was first released as a messaging app in 2011 by its parent company Tencent.

Wechat

But eventually, it grew quickly as an all in one app to connect different users to shopping, gaming, ride-sharing and also including government services. People used this app extensively to connect to friends and family.

In the month of April, they launched a new feature called “Good product circle” to strengthen its social shopping capabilities. This helped users to organize their shopping lists across mini-programs.

Later WeChat introduced a new interactive module that allows users to recommend products, access friends’ recommendation lists, and socialize on the interface.

Conclusion

This trend of social shopping is going to grow leaps and bounds as companies try their best to woo customers towards their products and services.

Online social site users will now get an opportunity to try social shopping to get a feeling of being more connected and involved in an in-depth and personal online shopping experience.