When looking at social e-commerce examples, you will see a new wave emerging from developments in the technology that powers social media and the behaviors of Gen Z and millennial shoppers alike.
Sharing creative content, tagging businesses, utilizing their hashtags, and even submitting reviews on company pages has never been easier for customers. Hence, it’s a fantastic potential for brands, but it can be intimidating if you’re new to it or have little expertise with social commerce strategy.
That’s why firms have begun to develop tools and platforms to make social commerce easier for both customers and sellers, as with most sorts of inbound marketing. For example, Shopify offers solutions to brands looking for new methods to promote and sell on social media. It also makes social purchasing more user-friendly and appealing to consumers.
Before diving in, let’s look at the overview of social e-commerce these days.
Contents
- 1 Overview: What Is Social E-commerce & Its Benefits
- 2 Common Social E-Commerce Platforms
- 3 What Are Social Commerce Features?
- 3.1 Storefronts on social profiles
- 3.2 Shoppable organic posts
- 3.3 Shoppable paid ads
- 3.4 Branded influencer content
- 3.5 Live shopping
- 3.6 A shop tab or feed
- 3.7 Social media content on brands’ profiles and e-commerce websites
- 3.8 User shopping lists and wish lists
- 3.9 Messaging capabilities from in-app product pages
- 4 Best Social E-commerce Examples To Get Inspired
- 5 Using Shopify As A Solution For Activate Your Social Commerce
- 6 Last Words – A Strategic Approach To Social Commerce
Overview: What Is Social E-commerce & Its Benefits
The use of social involvement to create economic transactions is known as social e-commerce. Hence, customers have a more engaging experience, reducing friction and boosting revenue.
Specifically, you can utilize networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok. Each has a distinct set of tools for putting your products in front of potential buyers throughout their social media scroll.
The most influential trends impacting social e-commerce examples include video, influencer marketing, and live shopping. It’s changing the way your customer buy since it eliminates the need to leave the social network apps; they can make a purchase right on the app.
Moreover, you can refer to social commerce strategy, including:
- In-app purchases via social media and social networks
- Organic shoppable posts
- Shoppable ads
- Besides, shoppable influencer content
- Shoppable videos and media leading to e-commerce sites
Social e-commerce benefits
There are numerous advantages for businesses that engage in social e-commerce examples. Social commerce provides marketers with a ready-made audience for consistent audience growth. More people join Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms every day. Besides, each new user represents a possible new consumer for social commerce firms.
Moreover, brand interaction on social media has also improved search rankings. Even if you sell directly on social media, some people will visit your website to look at your products. Google will notice the increased traffic and will most likely modify its search ranks accordingly.
Lastly, social commerce promotes interaction with potential clients. Because social media is two-way, you can get input from your customers. Word of mouth on social media might also help you meet new individuals. Social commerce strategy allows you to meet new people and develop new relationships that you can nurture and enhance over time. Thus, customers who are pleased with their purchases are more inclined to make more purchases.
Common Social E-Commerce Platforms
There are a lot of platforms that the following social e-commerce examples use, including:
- Instagram: Because of its essentially visual character, Instagram has always had an advantage over many social competitors. Instagram Shopping posts can now be converted directly into ads after the usual social commerce element of the post has been completed.
- Youtube: YouTube has begun to include product shops in its shopping adverts. While there aren’t many of these ad campaigns out and in the wild yet, brands that can connect themselves to high-quality material relating to their sector will benefit from YouTube’s social aspect.
- Facebook: Facebook is developing social commerce tools to assist brands. It now allows many US businesses to use Instagram’s in-app checkout, allowing customers to complete their purchases entirely within the Facebook app.
- Pinterest: Pinterest, like Instagram, focuses on creative stuff. Their visual discovery engine lends itself well to social commerce.
- Tiktok: TikTok’s involvement with social commerce is still in its early stages, but the video-sharing site has been conducting trials in this area. It already has a global partnership with Shopify.
- Others: Snapchat, Wechat, Verint, Amazon Live, etc.
Excluding advertising from the broader social commerce area may cause you to miss out on some of the value generated by your efforts. Let’s go over the top social commerce features and see what businesses with popular social commerce channels can teach us.
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What Are Social Commerce Features?
Brands can use social commerce in a variety of ways. The significant elements and functionalities make social media purchasing possible and straightforward.
You can do this on Instagram and Facebook for social selling example, to construct a dynamic social media storefront. These storefronts can, in many respects, mirror the layout of your e-commerce website, with collections, product pages with full descriptions, and recommended products.
Shoppable organic posts
By doing social commerce strategy, you can allow your customers to shop directly from your Instagram feed posts (photos and videos), TikTok videos, Instagram Stories/Reels, Pinterest pins, Facebook pictures, and carousels. These posts resemble conventional photographs or videos, with an icon or label in the corner indicating that one or more products have been tagged in the post.
Shoppable paid ads
Brands can execute paid social campaigns to provide shoppable posts to a specific audience. Shoppable advertising is frequently based on the goods and categories that a user has previously browsed, so they can serve as an excellent reminder to complete the purchase.
Branded influencer content
Influencers can also share shoppable posts by tagging products in their Instagram Stories or feed posts. When users touch on a product tag, they are sent immediately to the brand’s profile’s in-app product page. In other words, the product is part of the brand’s profile, not the influencer’s.
It is one of the excellent social e-commerce examples to ensure a pleasant buying experience for customers who discovered you through an influencer.
Live shopping
Live shopping is a hybrid of live video and e-commerce. Brands may use live shopping to create a fun, engaging livestream experience while promoting their items, which viewers can purchase directly from the broadcast.
Live shopping is famous in Asia and is expected to reach $171 billion by 2020. Slowly but steadily, live shopping is spreading to Western countries, which is expected to account for 10% to 20% of global e-commerce by 2026. Live shopping events were successful for brands such as Aldo and Walmart.
A shop tab or feed
Brands can embed their products in their profiles, social media postings, adverts, and user-generated material on social media platforms. However, some of them, such as Instagram, have dedicated a part of their app to shopping.
It’s next to Explore (for search and recommended content) and Reels. It displays recommended products, promoted stores, wish list items, recently launched items from followed accounts, and shops comparable to those the user follows and browses. It’s an infinite scrolling experience, with posts and products being added. As a result, the user never reaches the feed’s bottom.
Facebook has a shop tab, but it is peer-to-peer rather than companies selling to consumers.
Social media content on brands’ profiles and e-commerce websites
User-generated content (UGC) is an effective technique to combine organic posts by customers of brands with the capabilities of social platforms.
Brands can accomplish this by displaying their users’ posts on their social accounts and tagging the user and the products they’re wearing.
Specially, you can also contain user-generated content for your e-commerce website. Brands seek out postings that mention their products and include them in a gallery on their website. They then tag things that visitors can purchase directly from the gallery photographs. The Instagram gallery pages of Skinnydip London and Macy’s Style Crew are outstanding social e-commerce examples.
User shopping lists and wish lists
Adding things to a wish list on e-commerce websites is critical because it enables users to create tailored groupings of products they like. Customers may now purchase stuff through social media. Thus it’s worth allowing them to establish product collections there as well.
Users may save, revisit, and buy things they like on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Messaging capabilities from in-app product pages
Customers in a physical business can seek assistance from store employees. On e-commerce websites, livechat feature acts as a store assistant. It all boils down to direct messages (DMs)—the ability to message a brand directly on social media.
The closer the messaging choice is to the product or collection page, the better the user experience.
Check out B2B Ecommerce Trends: Chance To Increase Your Revenue In 2022 to learn tips for B2B stores.
Best Social E-commerce Examples To Get Inspired
Nike
(Source: Alist Daily)
Nike’s Jordan, a legendary shoe, collaborated with Snapchat in 2018 to capitalize on the NBA All-Star game.
The brand provided all its customers with access to an exclusive launch sale within a particular field. The deal was on its limited-edition Air Jordan III ‘Tinker’ shoe, which was only available in a specific court area where the game was being played.
This social media and commerce integration adds interest to the offer and brings people together. Purchasing shoes becomes a seamless experience for customers.
It is one of the best social e-commerce examples for directing social media users to your marketing efforts and increasing brand sales. Snapchat was an excellent choice because people tend to make tales during such gatherings.
Furthermore, Nike uses customer service as a sales tool.
The company’s Twitter support, @teamnike, is one of the best because they respond swiftly and consistently. What distinguishes them is that they provide direct guidance and support in discussions and only direct messages (DMs) when more detailed information is required. This social selling example shows other potential consumers what Nike is doing to assist with troubleshooting.
Eureka Street Furniture
Eureka Street Furniture, a well-known furniture store in Australia, is a prime example of social commerce. On their website, they have shoppable Instagram and shoppable UGC galleries.
In addition, Taggshop was used to construct and distribute both of these shoppable social galleries where their own Instagram brand posts are included in a shoppable Instagram gallery.
The shoppable UGC gallery displays visual UGC from social media platforms where they have been tagged or discussed. Taggshop selected this UGC from social media, tagged products, and then published it as “INSPIRATION” on their website.
Milk Bar
In 2008, famous chef Christina Tosi established Milk Bar as a tiny bakery in New York City’s East Village. Since then, Milk Bar has expanded into a countrywide e-commerce force, selling cakes, cookies, pies, and ice cream.
(Source: Shopify)
Before the epidemic began in 2020, 75 percent of Milk Bar’s revenue came from its physical stores, with the remainder coming from internet sales. The epidemic affected all of it. Christina replied on Instagram and its social commerce features later, which have played an essential role in Milk Bar’s growth ever since.
Milk Bar used live videos, vibrant product photos, customer takeovers on Stories, and video instructions to get in front of consumers during initial lockdowns. They spent more time on social media than ever before. Milk Bar’s films often receive tens (and occasionally hundreds!) of thousands of views, despite having over 800,000 followers today.
Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club is another notable social selling example. It is up to brands to either develop or destroy their followers’ trust.
Even if current customers are not afraid to spend, brands should do everything necessary to earn their customers’ trust.
Social proof is one of the most powerful tools and an effective social commerce strategy for any business or brand.
In an e-commerce industry rife with competition, you should use good feedback from your customers’ functions as potent social proof. This method will assist you in standing out among the crowd, but it will also help you gain the trust of your customers.
Consider Dollar Shave Club, which has a Pinterest board dedicated to positive customer feedback and unboxing images.
This clever combination of user-generated content with social proof result in one of the social e-commerce examples in real life. It aids in developing brand trust, authenticity, credibility, and more profitable returns.
JUNO & Co.
(Source: Shopify)
JUNO & Co. is a direct-to-consumer beauty firm that uses TikTok to demonstrate how its unique skincare products operate. It’s a huge success: the brand has nearly 200,000 TikTok followers and millions of video views on the platform.
JUNO & Co. received significant success after joining Shopify’s trial program for brands to sell their products on TikTok. “We noticed an immediate response. “Our sales on TikTok are ten times what we’ve gotten from Instagram and Facebook,” JUNO & CO. founder Kyle Jiang told Inc. magazine.
Forbes reported in late 2020 that JUNO & Co. had grown 300 percent year over year, with TikTok and Instagram playing a significant role in the company’s development. Product how-tos, gift videos, premieres, and instructive videos are among the entertaining videos produced by JUNO & Co.
JUNO & Co. takes a significantly lighter, more aesthetic approach on Instagram. Feed postings are centered on visually-appealing photographs, entertaining videos, and the occasional TikTok video with no product tags.
Visitors can occasionally reach JUNO & Co.’s Instagram storefront via Stories’s main profile and product tags.
Using Shopify As A Solution For Activate Your Social Commerce
Social commerce has the potential to boost your community, customer loyalty, sales, revenue, and brand exposure to new heights. It has the potential to serve as the cornerstone for tremendous growth, much like the social e-commerce examples we’ve discussed.
Shopify merchants have an advantage in executing a social commerce strategy. Within your Shopify admin, you can develop, administer, and optimize social campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok and convert them into sales channels for your shop. Shopify, for example, makes it simple to add product links, in-feed adverts, and a shopping button to your TikTok profile.
Ideally, Shopify can offer a flawless shopping experience that your customers will want to repeat.
If you want to explore more about Shopify features and benefits, refer to Shopify Pricing Plans: Which Is The Right Choice For Your Store In 2022?
Last Words – A Strategic Approach To Social Commerce
Social commerce is a fantastic potential for any company that sells things online. You’ll be able to create better buying experiences and minimize friction for your customers while obtaining vital data, building trust, and enhancing your online performance by utilizing both in-app sales on social and influencer stores on your site.
The social e-commerce examples above aren’t the dimension for success. You can achieve success in your creative way. Take it as an example to learn from and keep in mind that reduce the steps required for your consumers to share their experiences with your products, sign up for further information, write a review, and more. Simplifying is an essential aspect of these marketing activities.
People who love your products and brand will turn up and engage if you make the experience enjoyable and rewarding.
