Social shopping

In this post we dedided to clarify what social shopping is. In essence, it is an e-commerce and social media combination which consists in engaging customers’ aqcuaintances in shopping experience and endevouring to imitate brick-and-mortar shops. Since nowadays we find ourselves in a intensive mobile device development age, this particular topic is becoming more and more relevant. Social media has been performing a huge impact on the way people shop and It’s stated that in 2015 e-retail sales will face 17% increase.

Social shopping categories

To provide you with a better understanding on social shoping conception we’ve made up our mind to divide it into different categories.

The first one which is to be touched upon is Shoping Marketplaces. Basically, it is the same as our actual bazaars, in which independent sellers present their products to buyers and thus are able to make money. Marketplaces satisfy both parties, since they serve as a great communication platform which connects buyers and sellers together, and as an oustanding assistant in providing a discovery engine (for buyers) and in performing an e-commerce facilitator role (for sellers).

To examplify the aforementioned information, we suggest you visiting these Shoping Marketplace representatives: Shopcade, Polyvore, Storenvy, Etsy

The second category, we would like to cover is Shopping Communities. Its principal idea consists in bringing people into one place, letting them discuss products, show their attitudes towards diverse goods, communicate with other users, and simply share among their friends.

While talking about Social Shopping conception, we certainly cannot help mentioning such an cruacial aspect as Sharing. Conformly to a Sprout Social survey, approximately 75% consumers come to take into consideration other people’s feedbacks on diverse social networks when it comes to purchasing. Besides, It’s quite easy to understand that peer pressure has always influnced the decision to make a purchase, therefore when people see a shared product in their news feed, they are likely to follow this link and then depending on their preferences, they may even buy it. A survey, as regards the sharing significance showed that whenever a user shares a product on a social network it leads to the following results:

• Facebook, 1.1 clicks per share
• StumbleUpon, 0.98
• Twitter, 0.97
• Wanelo, 0.94
• Pinterest, 0.87

Buy button

Since over the last few years e-commerce and social media platforms faced a tremendeous success, nowadays we are in the period when these realities are to combine. Consequently, the “buy” button is getting in on social networks, such as Polyvore. Even Google experiments with with this new trend. But what is Polyvore?

In fact, it is a social commerce site in which users generate style-theme content, creating different sets of products. It looks like Pinterest, however it also provides its customers with performing buying/selling processes, and its market specializes in home decór and personal style.

Despite the fact, Polyvore is not that big as Pinterest, it creates a favorable environment for making purchases. Conformly to the site’s statitics, the avarage Polyvore user’s basket estimates $200. Not bad, right? But everybody can take an advantage out of this website. Brands, for example, can easily push sales to get their products promoted by using cost per click model. Besides, since it possesses a social network structure, there are accounts which are followed by numerous people. How can we use it? As a well-known fact, people tend to perceive information much better from authority (in this case top followers), therefore different companies are able to create even a brand. Social network features such as: comments, likes and shares will make a huge impact on company success.

Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram

As regards such social networks as Facebook and Pinterest, we can observe their development as social shopping websites. They have recently launched their first ads (Facebook)/pinns(Pinterest) with “buy” buttons. Consequently, now you can buy a product not even leaving the social media platform. It means that we are about to face an enormous e-commerce and social shopping development.

However, Instagram is somewhat restricted in implementing social shopping features, because its posted photos cannot provide referrals.

To make a conclusion, it’s obvious that we are in an increadible e-commerce development age, we therefore suggest you using all possible approches to make your online business successful.

if you have any questions concerning this topic, do not hesitate to contact us.