Social Commerce: Definition and Features

Nowadays social media networks become more and more popular among people of different age and state. They use it not only for communication but also for purchasing, as it is more convenient, easier and often even cheaper than to buy goods in traditional shops. Consequently, social media is an incredibly effective way for online retailers to find new customers and to grow their income. That’s why every owner of eCommerce business should know about such phenomenon as social commerce.

There are such situations when a company does its best to attract potential customers with the help of various social media networks, but everything is in vain. And here social commerce comes in handy. Let’s find out what it is and how it can be beneficial for you.

The term «social commerce» (or as it is often called social shopping) has such a name not occasionally/accidentally. It consists of two parts, and it means a point where social media meets with commerce. In other words, it is a way in which the buying process is streamlined with the help of popular social media networks which acts as platforms for selling and purchasing. Today, a huge influence on buyers has such social networks as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook because they spend much of their free time there. So, why not to use this great opportunity to make your business more profitable?

One of the components of social commerce is so-called social shopping instruments. To them belong various forums, chats and communities where people discuss their shopping experience, give comments about this or that products and advise where you can find quality products.

With social commerce, selling becomes simpler. You don’t need to sell somewhere else because you can sell directly on a preferred social network either with the help of checkouts or other tools about which we will tell you further.

In order to sale in any social media network, you should make it a sale platform. And for gaining this, you can use «Buy Now» button which is today a widespread and effective tool for such a transformation. The reason is that this button acts like call-to-act and encourages buyers to complete the purchase. Note that it should be eye-catching and situated in an appropriate place for customers’ convenience.

There is another way of selling with the help of social commerce – social commerce apps and plugins. A great example of it is Soldsie. The mechanism of its work is as follows:

1. A user who wants to purchase the desired item writes under the post with this item just one word – «Sold».
2. This app sees the comment after posting it and emails him to complete the purchase.
3. The user confirms the order, makes the payment and gets his product.

As we can see, from the one hand, it is easy for the customer to buy a product because he doesn’t spend much time and on the other hand, with this app the process of selling is also facilitated.

With the rise of Instagram, we can encounter such thing as shoppable posts and «stories». You tag a certain product which is depicted or mentioned in your post, and your followers can notice this tag and read the information about given product and then buy it without opening a new application because everything is taken place in this social network itself.

All in all, we can come up with the conclusion that as we live in the 21st century which is regarded as a century of Information Technology Revolution the way of selling and buying has hugely changed. If you want to do your business successfully, you should know and use social commerce. Try it and see how your income will change by times.