Consumers are constantly on social media, scrolling through posts from friends and brands. Many have begun clicking on some of those brand posts and making purchases.
“Social commerce is becoming increasingly popular for brands,” noted Darin Archer, chief strategy officer at Elastic Path.
“Even when the transaction itself may be happening outside the app, there’s a much smaller gap between discovery and purchase,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“It makes it easy for shoppers to transact when they’re already thinking about your ad,” Archer said.
A social commerce strategy can be more effective “than counting on the shopper to remember the ad or the product later when they’re shopping in-store,” he added.
“You’re streamlining the shopping process for consumers by making browsing and transacting more connected — in many cases, drastically reducing the time between the peak of purchase intent and the ability to complete a transaction,” said Archer.
In essence, people live on social media, so it’s a relatively small step to shop there as well.
“Social media has always been an important gateway to making purchase decisions,” observed Liz Cole, group director for social strategy at Digitas.
“Research has shown that more than half of consumers have purchased a product after seeing it recommended by someone they follow on social channels, and nearly 75 percent have purchased a product after first seeing it in a brand’s own social post,” she told the E-Commerce Times.
As consumers become more comfortable with the idea of social commerce, social media platforms are adapting.
Social platforms are “building out more and better commerce functionality, from shoppable tags to product catalog-enabled ads to transactional chatbots,” said Cole.
“As the path from post to purchase shortens, people’s openness to discovering new products and buying them directly through social channels has also expanded to include categories of products — like mattresses or prescription medications — that previously weren’t commonly purchased online at all,” she noted.
Social Commerce Success
Successful social commerce relies on creating a sense of continuity across all the channels consumers use to interact with a brand.
“To succeed in selling through social media, brands will need to figure out how to effectively integrate the social commerce experience with existing touchpoints, like mobile and Web,” said Elastic Path’s Archer.
“They should also ensure that the brand experience within an app is specifically tailored to that touchpoint. The checkout experience for social commerce should be relevant to that context rather than just a desktop experience repurposed for social,” he advised. “The customer shouldn’t notice any change to their experience as they move through the purchase journey.”
Social commerce also relies on a sense of loyalty that’s built up over time and place between brands and their customers, and so the products people buy through social media must be competitively priced and of reliable quality, according to Mousumi Behari, digital strategy practice lead at Avionos.
“Given the visual nature of social media, small format videos are becoming increasingly popular to create a storyline and impact the brand,” she the E-Commerce Times.
Influencers often play a big role in the success of social media commerce since they serve as a conduit between the world of shopping and social media connectivity.
“They already have a likability factor, and customers will trust what they are selling,” said Behari. “Brands are succeeding with this approach, such as Nike with Kobe Bryant, or Puma with Selena Gomez.”
Ultimately, social commerce is all about communication.
“Creating a two-way conversation on social media is also improving customer retention. We see massive brands like Target servicing their customers in the comment section and meeting the user where they are,” explained Behari.
“Retailers should allocate money to market in these platforms,” she recommended. “The interactions on social media feel personalized, and since the customer is able to curate their feed, chances are they are seeing sponsored ads to similar products of people they already follow.”
The Evolution of Social Commerce
Social commerce is evolving continually as it capitalizes on new platforms and methodologies.
“Social commerce is going to grow, and it’s obvious there’ll become more ways to ‘instantly’ buy,” noted Amelia Neate, senior manager at Influencer Matchmaker.
“I predict more social feeds will be integrated on websites,” she told the E-Commerce Times. “For example, DFS has begun introducing integrated Instagram feeds on their website, which helps show their products in situ. Encouraging a purchase, buyers can see how a piece is styled and how it may look and feel in their homes.”
Rachael Samuels, manager of social media at Sprout Social, suggests that brands selling via social media need to find new ways to connect with customers.
“As social commerce continues to grow, brands will need to humanize themselves by creating content their audience can relate to and identify with,” she told the E-Commerce Times. “In the year ahead, I expect to see more e-commerce brands leveraging micro-influencer partnerships, integrating social shopping experiences across multiple platforms, and finding creative ways to empower audiences to sell for them, such as turning honest customer feedback into distributable content.”
Social commerce might gradually expand beyond simple purchases to include larger ones as consumers become more comfortable with the idea of buying through their social media feeds.
“As Gen Z gains purchasing power and the platforms themselves improve commerce capability, we will see growth here,” predicted Brian Walker, chief strategy officer at Bloomreach.
“Certainly, we will likely see these platforms continue to grow in influence over shopping and buying, including in high-consideration categories like real estate,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “For example, in the future, we could see real estate listings on Snapchat’s Snap Map feature.”
Another development will be smoother checkouts.
“We may see mobile payment services like Apple Pay and Venmo integrate directly into social media apps to reduce further friction,” said Walker.
More in-app transactions are on the horizon.
“I see the in-app transaction experience as the next step for social commerce,” said Archer. “Linking to an external e-commerce site begins to monetize the browsing experience, but it’s not as seamless as possible. To create that ease of purchase, brands must move the actual transaction into the social app. We already see this with Instagram’s Checkout function, and this will cause a ripple effect with other brands making the move to support in-app transactions.”
Archer said that as social commerce evolves, brands must understand that they must offer consumers full shopping experiences, even when they are clicking and buying on the go.
“A brand’s future social commerce experience will need to communicate with all other commerce touchpoints, like the Web store, to facilitate seamless transactions,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll lose shopper engagement.”
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Absolutely Right, Totally agreed that social media is going to be another useful platform for Brands to share or sell their products.
Customers who wants to purchase any particular product can buy easily from social media because nowadays people gives their time to social media more than any e-commerce platform.
Influencer marketing also boosts sales from social media because these influencers have huge number of followers and they promote genuine products which increases the chance of conversion.