Consumers now expect so much more from shopping online, in fact, they expect more than ever before. These days, shopping has become something that people can even partake in via social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.
Consumers now know that social media helps them to discover brands and even engage with the brands they’re already familiar with while they shop. They can also do a spot of research before they choose to buy anything. It’s thought that more than 500,000 millennials already shop this way.
Fastest-Growing Avenues
Research has shown that social networks are some of the fastest-growing avenues when it comes to driving traffic to online retailers. Impressively, the top 500 retailers in the world earn almost £5 billion from social shopping. These were the figures back in 2017, which showed almost 25% growth on the previous year of social shopping figures.
While many retailers do indeed use social media to help raise brand awareness while directing people to their stores, converting those visits into sales is another thing entirely. It’s thought that only 10% of those who interact with a post on social media will actually buy a product. This means that work needs to be done to ensure that more people convert into paying customers.
Shoppable Posts
Instagram launched ‘Shoppable’ posts in early 2019, which meant that retailers could tag their products in Instagram posts. This allowed potential consumers to go from Instagram to the checkout in 2 clicks, and they can do this on their phone. A more recent update has allowed consumers to make a purchase without them leaving Instagram. This means it’s a lot easier for the consumer to make that impulse purchase.
Snapchat and Shopping
Snapchat has recently got on board with a similar idea. It recently announced its range of new ecommerce developments and one of them was, of course, it’s own way to shop. This is in a lot more exciting than Instagram’s shopping capabilities. This is because the product search feature that Snapchat added was done so in partnership with Amazon.
Will social commerce make a difference to online retailers? If there is the chance for the consumer to make an impulse purchase then a business is more likely to find that their sales increase. It is now time for businesses to use social commerce to its full extent.
