E-commerce is becoming part of everyday life for consumers and business / brand owners. Accessibility, product visualization, segmentation, differentiation and personalization are cornerstones of this evolving industry.
There is one additional significant layer that changes the rules of the game for the supplier and that is customer sales dialog. That layer is the social and / or community characteristics that affect the customer’s shopping journey and the way he gets purchase decision.
This additional layer is called: Social Commerce.
Here is a very basic and familiar example: If friends on Facebook hit Like to the song I uploaded, some of them might buy the song.
What is the role of these social elements in purchasing?
- Brand’s relevance – based on the information about the way members use the product or feedback about it, I define how relevant it is to me and to my reference group.
- Pre-Purchase hesitation – just before I buy, I consult with my friends. Sharing with them my last-minute thoughts. This can happen in the digital store or across the net.
- Purchase decision – the moment of decision. Here too, friends, or friends of friends, the so-called FOF can be a factor in the decision process. At this point I influence others based on my own experience. I become an Influencer instead of one of the influenced, even if that influence is not applied to my direct friends.
The digital or e-commerce world cannot exist today without this significant component of mutual influence in the community of users, and without the social characteristics of sales and purchase moves.
Every social activity, across all networks, affects the purchasing campaign of consumers, primarily the digital natives’ generation who post purchase feedback.
The age of discovery – is the term that describes the first stop on the digital consumer’s shopping journey. Unlike previous stages, where we learned about products and located them through the traditional media, and later on with search engine optimization, current times are characterized by gathering global information (including locating products) while hanging out on social.
This is the first and basic layer of the field called Social Commerce.
Nearly 40% of millennial users reported that their first encounter with relevant products was on either Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. The more the network is characterized as a “visual media area”, the more it plays a significant and effective role in the interaction between users and a new product.
In the United States, the majority of those who start their shopping journey on Facebook end up with Amazon. The brand’s home page is second to the completion of their shopping campaign, which has started on social. The past year has witnessed a correlation between the beginning of the journey on Facebook and shopping on social, as well as traffic to the physical store of the brand. The cross-platform acquisition concept becomes strategic for brands and companies that understand the importance of social strata to promote their digital sales.
Another role of the social layer lies in allowing digital brands and stores to locate and mark the passionate segment into their category. A natural products store can easily use social to pinpoint those who crave natural foods, natural beauty products or unique recipes for the veggies that the store incorporates in its value proposition.
A digital store that focuses its marketing activity in this segment will be able to perform better in Return On Marketing Investments (ROMI). Each invested dollar will work better for the store when it comes to this segment of Passionates, they will try new products, read the content that the store offers, distribute that content to their friends and talk about the store products.
Identifying this target audience and turning it into a brand promoter is perhaps the most significant anchor for the social layer in the e-commerce category.
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