Online Shopping just got easier! Social Media platforms are making moves to cater to online shoppers, even when they’re not in a shopping mindset. They are opening ecommerce capabilities on their platforms and making the purchase process simple by offering easy payment options, discovery capabilities, and even sharing recent purchases. The new ecommerce trend moving to Social Media has been coined Social Commerce.
What is Social Commerce?
Social Commerce is the ability to make a purchase for a third-party company within a native social media platform. A good example is Pinterest’s “Buy Now” button, which allows you to complete a purchase and payment directly on Pinterest without having to visit the company’s website.
Why Social Commerce?
With the average American spending 9 hours a day on Social Media, we see the growing trend for ecommerce brands looking to reach their customer base where they’re spending their time and the social channels are responding with growing capabilities to make shopping easier.
According to Gartner, 74% of consumers turn to social media to help guide their purchase. A study done by Shopify confirms this, showing social media traffic to the Shopify store accounting for 529K ecommerce orders.
Learn what platforms are available for Social Commerce
Facebook has two options for Brands to set up Social Commerce. The first one being Facebook Shop, which allows you to add a tab to your business’ Facebook Page where you list products you’re selling and connect with more customers.
The second option that Facebook offers is through Facebook Messenger, which is more conversational. A user can go through prompts that allow them to learn more about the product offerings and make a purchase directly through the app, even receiving order confirmations and updates.
With over 500 million active users, Instagram is a great place to connect with potential customers and ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, make it easy by partnering with Instagram to offer Shoppable post.
Shoppable posts allow for users to learn more about your products and even make a purchase with just a couple taps.
Pinterest is another platform that is making online shopping easier, by extending the Buyable Pin option to more ecommerce platforms. The Shopify connection helps make any existing rich pins into shoppable pins and allowing users to complete the purchase directly on Pinterest.
Snapchat
The newest platform to the Social Commerce game is Snapchat with a teaser of the Snap Store back in February. While the Snap Store focused on selling Snap Inc. product, it offered potential to an in-app commerce platform.
More recently, and successfully, Snapchat has created augmented reality shopping ads mixing selfies with commerce. The “Shoppable AR” feature is similar to the selfie lenses, that the platform became known for, but include a CTA button that can lead users to a shopping page, app-install, video, or website without leaving the platform.
While of course, at the end of the day Facebook Shop or Instagram Shoppable post aren’t comparable to the sales you would see on Amazon, these platforms do allow you to market to your target demographic, offer independent influences, show visual content for user discovery, and offer a new sales channel.
If you’re interested in getting Social Commerce set up for your brand, contact Anvil today!