Social Commerce – the low down
Social commerce is the new-ish kid on the social media block and is hoping to bring together all the best bits of shopping and social media. Have you ever been browsing through Pinterest and been disappointed that you can’t click through and buy those shoes, jewellery or running top that you’ve seen? Social media brings together a combination of shopping and the internet by capitalising on social media driven sales (shops on Facebook), reviews (Amazon), user-curated wish lists (Fancy, Wanelo), peer to peer selling (ebay and etsy) and group buying (Groupon, LivingSocial).
The basis of social commerce, relies on our need to have relationships with people and subsequently how we want to interact with each other – how many people do you see on your way to work who are on their mobile or tablet – browsing, texting, shopping etc? How many of us use internet forums for advice or ideas on every topic from which is the best coffee machine to buy through to web development trends? These are all ways of having relationships with people online. Shopping is often a group activity where we look to our friends and family for recommendations or read product reviews. There’s no denying that when I am browsing for a birthday present, I take into consideration others reviews – even when I don’t know the reviewer. Some recent statistics from Facebook Marketing show that 77% of us use reviews whilst on line shopping and almost 50% of have made a purchase having read reviews on social media. If we like something, we instinctively want to share it.
As much as we like or follow a shop/company page on social media, it’s important we don’t get bombarded with advertising and coupons otherwise today’s favourite will end up in tomorrow’s spam bin. Less can still be more.
As a final note, in case you are over all the jargon, a great article from the Independent on how the Government are banning public sector jargon – it’s brilliant!
Social Commerce – Further information
