Seth Godin, a former dot-com business executive and an author, said that these days we are able to turn strangers into friends, then those friends into customers, and those customers into salespeople.
And he’s right! It’s easy to turn strangers into your own friends. And if you promote your website on social media, you’re able to turn friends into paying customers. Furthermore, it’s also easy to turn customers into salespeople: just put a discount code in front of them and tell them it works only if it gathers a certain number of likes.
Over the last decade, there have been numerous social media platforms that have basically taken over the world and our lives. These social networks have reached an astounding audience, like no other form of communication before. And this is the reason why it’s important to the industry of eCommerce to collaborate with the social media platforms.
Thanks to the introduction of social commerce, your friends can become your customers on pretty much any social media platform, without having to visit your website. And that’s what makes social media so valuable to eCommerce.
The ability to purchase any product from a third-party company within the social media experience is what we define as social commerce nowadays.
Thanks to the ever-evolving strides of technology and our increased use of both smartphones and social networks, the wide world of online shopping has been changing and turning a lot more social.
According to a recent survey, approximately three out of four shoppers have been relying on social media to guide their purchasing decision. As a result, it’s quite clear that sellers need to go with whatever platform their customers are using, instead of trying to get them to leave the platform and visit a website.
We’re all seeing that social commerce is a market that has been on the rise and encompasses plenty of options. Shoppers can make group purchases, they can do this via mobile apps, there’s the option of social shopping and shopping that is integrated into social media platforms. Even retailers can add their own social features.
So it’s extremely important for sellers to be active on the big social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. And it’s also important for the existing eCommerce giants like eBay and Amazon to collaborate with the said platforms in order to improve the entire shopping experience.
