Creating a viral shopping experience for your customers: the rise of “Social Shopping”

With the upward trend in social commerce (or social shopping) in recent years, online retailers have been forced to find creative, more unique ways to attract and retain customers. Social shopping uses technology like laptops, tablets and mobile phones to simulate the social interactions found when shopping in a bricks and mortar store, with the ability to share and exchange information with social networks and reap various rewards or incentives (often from social activities like liking or sharing someone’s post ). With this in mind, business owners need to rethink their sales strategies to better incorporate the social commerce element, and apply it to their own business, to re-define how to successfully market and sell their products. While this is important for businesses of all sizes, small businesses in particular need to focus on how they can do this in an intelligent, more efficient and highly cost-effective manner.

Singapore-based company PayWhere’s social commerce solution TackThis! was developed with this goal – to facilitate easy selling across web, social media and mobile platforms for aspiring and small to medium e-retailers, with sales conversion tools and advanced analytics to better engage and understand customers. TackThis! allows businesses to sell their goods on prime online locations, which can be directly integrated onto social media platforms for an immediate online presence. Customers can buy directly from the website, their social media platforms and/or their own mobile device(s), with TackThis! providing the easy to build, customizable storefront and fully integrated backend to track orders, sales and inventory. Paywhere CEO Dickson Gregory states “TackThis! provides better access to online shops via different channels such as social media and mobile, and we simply make it easier for retailers to engage their customers and enable a seamless shopping experience across all channels.”

The main advantage of Social Commerce is the exposure it provides via different social networks (which is highly targeted to their desired audience) and the ability for friends and peers to give input and make recommendations via posting, commenting, liking and sharing with others. Increasingly, more merchants are looking to bring their businesses online, especially smaller retailers and blog shops that don’t have the time or technical background to build their own online solution.  TackThis!’ all-encompassing eCommerce solution allows businesses to focus on what is most important, while providing the support and training they require to get that additional edge. Pawmart, an online retailer of over 2000 premium pet products and services, has been using TackThis! for just under a year to power their online shop. Pawmarts Owner, Kelly states “The reason why we choose TackThis! was because the social aspect was appealing to us. It allows us to leverage the popularity and widespread usage of Facebook, in particular, to increase our reach and sales revenue. Additionally, this also us better brand exposure as now customers can shop on our site using Facebook, or enter our site when they are reading about a product review on our blog”.  

One of the features that TackThis! offers to increase sales revenues for companies is the ‘Share Promotion Tool,’ a popular tool that provides customers with discounts when they share a product on their Facebook Timeline. This means the power of “word of mouth” actually becomes “the power of your Facebook reach,” which is highly valuable in reaching friends and acquaintances both consciously and sub-consciously. Products that are liked or used by friends have more clout than those which are juts advertised by companies.       

What about Mobile Platforms? 

With 189 million people using their mobile devices as the main platform to browse Facebook,[SOURCE 1] it is also important to explore websites optimized for mobile devices. TasselPlus, an online company specializing in plus-size fashion and accessories, chose the TackThis! platform for this reason – it came fully optimized for mobile commerce. Tassel Plus owner Jess states “TackThis! is the best choice for startups who wish to have a hassle-free, stable and fast solution, the application is user friendly and very functional for mobile devices.” Given 80% of consumers plan to conduct mobile commerce in the next 12 months,[SOURCE 2] All TackThis!’ solutions come fully optimized for mobile devices to increase exposure - customers can browse, shop and checkout their purchases on the go. TasselPlus reported a 20-30% increase of sales while using TackThis!, with the solution allowing them to reach larger proportion of customers then they previously reached. 

Analyze This 

Successful business owners will tell you that customer information, including demographics, spending and browsing patterns and actual conversion rates is crucial, and that this information needs to be accurate, timely and easy to understand. Analytics gives retailers a unique insight into the customer’s mind – who, what and when they are purchasing, and how they come to this decision (i.e. through browsing behavior, referrals, promotions and so on).  
Herbal Sense, a retailer of herbal teas, spices, organic essential oils and healthy foods, were looking for an easier way to make their website more dynamic in terms of content updates and price, product and image changes, which previously had to go through a web designer. This took time and was expensive – ideally, they wanted to do this in-house, to give them more control and allow them to react faster. TackThis! Analytics Tool gave Herbal Sense a better overview of which products were most popular allowing them to adjust their inventory accordingly and revealing which products they need to focus on. They have started providing more detailed information for their best selling items, Grace Lee owner of Herbal Sense, states, “TackThis! helped us organize our inventory in a more efficient way, which has streamlined their operations and enhanced sales.” TackThis! has an advanced Analytics tool that allows companies to understand not only their customer’s behavior but allows them to adjust their strategies (promotional or selling activities) to get the result they need.  In addition to providing very insightful information, the Analytics tool minimizes time waste on ineffective marketing or promotional campaigns. 

 TackThis! helps online and offline to make your business grow to it’s potential. It is a comprehensive solution that creates more brand exposure, the opportunity for social selling and along you way you really get to know your customers. Because of the analytics tool businesses can adapt quicker to their customers wishes. Making TackThis! the solution to a successful business! 

You can find more information about TackThis! at: www.tackthis.com.sg

Source 1: BufferApp: http://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-stats-studies 

Source 2: Digital Buzz Blog: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-2013-mobile-growth-statistics/