The Rise of Social Commerce
Social Commerce: A combination of Social Media and e-commerce. In other words, Social Commerce is a new form of shopping where Social Media users buy right off of channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and/or Snapchat.
How do People Spend Time Online?
The average person spends 2 hours a day on Social Media.
And that’s just the beginning of an upward momentum for social media usage. This number further translates to 5 years and 4 months spent on Social Media throughout an individual’s lifetime. The amount of time spent on Social Media beats time spent on eating, drinking, cleaning, and socializing! What could you do in 5 years and 4 months?
Social Media Today told us; in 5 years and 4 months, a person could do the following:
- Fly to the moon and back 32 times
- Walk the Great Wall of China 3.5 times
- Climb Mount Everest 32 times
- Run 10k marathons
- Walk your dog 93k times
- Watch the Simpson series 215 times
When it comes to shopping, an individual spends 45 minutes a day making a purchase online or in-store. Again this translates to about 3.5 hours a week or 7.5 days in a year, which ranks higher than socializing, cleaning the house, caring for family, and educational activities.
It is evident that people spend a lot of time on Social Media and shopping. When combining the two together, we get Social Commerce. It only makes sense that there has been an implementation of a Call-to-Action option on Social Media pages.
How have Social Media Platforms Used Social Commerce?
Facebook has gained the most traffic when it comes to Social Commerce. Facebook users are able to make a purchase by adding their credit card information directly into Facebook so that users can automatically make a purchase. Because of the quickness of being able to import your information, Facebook has the highest conversion rate compared to other platforms at 1.85%.
Pinterest has “Buyable Pins” which can be found through search results, your profile, and related pins. Explorers will know the item is buyable when there is a price listed above the product.
Instagram, the most visual platform, allows Instagrammers to shop with platforms such as Curulate. Curulate, a Pennsylvania based business provides a “link2buy” option in the bio after viewers see an image they like on the main page. MicroD’s partnership with Curulate will allow you (retailers) to have access to all Social Media, be able to tag your product once and then send it to all platforms and provide e-commerce reporting to understand where traffic is generated.
How does Social Commerce Impact the Home Furnishing Industry?
In 2016, home goods had the highest percentage of people who prefer to purchase online. And it terms of buying off of a mobile, home furnishings played a significant role.
According to eMarketer, “one-fifth of US digital sales in the furniture, appliances and equipment category, as well as home and garden, were conducted on mobile devices.” Because furniture is something that needs to be visual and consumers want to see it easily, Social Media is the largest influencer to make a purchase. It is the easiest form of shopping.
Since Social Media is where the most engagement occurs, you can make it even easier on consumers and let them make an immediate purchase on your social platform. You can scroll through your feed and find a piece of furniture that catches your eye.
With a click of a button, it’s yours.
Benefits of Social Commerce:
- Social Commerce is more social
- Via Social Media, users can communicate with their friends and family on what item they should purchase. It becomes a more interactive and user-friendly way to shop.
- Results in high revenue
- Since 2011, Social Commerce revenue has increased by more than $30 billion.
- Allows you to expand to a newer generation of shoppers
- Sometimes, people (mostly Millennials) don’t know what products are available because they tend not to view online catalogs or don’t have the time to go to the actual store. To fix this, you can market to them through Social Media
- Easy
- The easiest and most effective way to shop with just one click of your screen.
- Social Commerce is becoming the future of shopping
- As time moves on in our tech savvy world, shoppers will continue to use Social Media and retailers need to be able to keep up with how people prefer to spend their money.
Now is the time to implement Social Commerce for your customers. MicroD and Curalate are ready. Are you? Find out more information on how we can help you here by clicking on the image below!