Social commerce is a process involving selling off products and services directly through social media. The entire process of discovering new products, researching for more options and the check out process, everything happens on social media platforms.
Social commerce as the name suggests is the combination of social media and commerce, which is becoming highly popular these days making it a $89.4 billion market and is subjected to grow to $604.5 billion in the coming 7 years.
As of now instagram, facebook and pinterest are the apps which allow social commerce. Instagram has a “shop now” button which allows you to make purchases from the app itself. When scrolling through facebook you might see a button “buy” with which you can purchase anything you like right there in the app and can continue your usual facebook experience like before. Social media plays an important role in everyone’s lives these days and brands are taking full advantage of this opportunity.
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People might get confused with e-commerce and social commerce thinking it might be the same, well that’s not true. e-commerce is the shopping experience that allows the customer to purchase via an app or a website whereas social commerce allows the customers to make their entire purchase process within the social media app itself.
Simply gathering information about social commerce is not enough to actually make use of this feature on social media. Brands need to know why they should use it and what makes shopping easier in social commerce. Here are a few reasons and features of social commerce.
- Socialise while shopping
- Elimination of cart friction
- Augmented social media presence
- Easy access to target audience
- New trends excite millennials
- Diligently target your prime audience
Socialise while shopping
Shopping on social media platforms is highly interactive as compared to e-commerce where consumers can easily make purchases, take suggestions and flaunt their purchases. Users can also leave reviews, comments and interact with brands on a one-on-one level. Brands are not required to redirect their users to their websites and users can shop without hampering their social media experience.
Elimination of cart friction
Cart friction is when we as users stop our checkout process because the app or websites asks us to make an account before completing the checkout process. Statistics show that about 35% consumers abandon their carts because of this while 27% checkout process is either too long or too complicated. Risk abandonment is a major fear for most of the brands and social commerce reduces this fear to a great extent. Social commerces offers flawless browsing, easy purchase sojourn and less complicates checkout process. Since the fear of cart abandonment is eliminated, the conversion rates have been increasing consistently.
Augmented social media presence
To make optimum utilisation of social commerce, it is important to make your social media presence fairly strong as it shows that about 89% users purchase from the brands they already follow. Users communicate with brands through reviews, comments and ratings on social media which helps the brands improve and make their experience far better than e-commerce.
Easy access to target audience
Social commerce allows brands to eliminate any extra e-commerce techniques and complexities that restrict them to reach their customers and interact with them personally. This process enables brands to dig deep into their use behaviour without any interruptions or difficulties. Social commerce offers highly clothed analytics that studies target audience and their behaviours which helps brands to figure what works best for them and improve user conversions. Statistics show that users respond 5 times more on smart phones than on desktops and social commerce is a smartphone friendly process which is designed to work seamlessly on phones as well as on desktops giving their target audience easy access to the brand’s products.
New trends excite millennials
Zero interruption into social activities plays a major role in making social commerce a success as it features flawless shopping experience without hampering social media experience. 91% users on social media are already familiar with social media and how to use it, any added feature is likely to grow rapidly which only intensifies the entire experience. Customers can add products to their cart while scrolling through their feed and make instant payment via wallets and UPI making the entire journey super fast and convenient.
Diligently target your prime audience
43.8% users on the internet claim that social media is the primary source for researching new products and brands. Users love to explore and try new products from different brands on social media, making it easy for the brands to gather new audience daily. Using right keywords and hashtags plays a significant role in their shoppable posts making it easy for users to find them and look for similar products with cheap prices and great quality.
All in all, social commerce brings customers close to the brands and helps with a result-driven behaviour. Earlier brands were required to use “visit our website”, “click on the link” or “link in bio” like keywords to redirect their users on their app or website. This entire process has been eliminated with social commerce and brands can now reach their targeted audience easily and increase their conversion rates to a great extent. Authentic posts and buyable products inspires customers to make purchases without leaving the app.
Because of such advantages social commerce is rapidly gaining popularity and even the renowned brands have been using this feature which shows that social commerce will become more useful and strong in the near future.
