E-COMMERCE
It has to be simple, fast and convenient - consumer shopping behavior has changed extremely in recent years. To meet growing needs and expectations, retail models are changing at an ever faster pace. From the high street, to online shopping, to social shopping, to conversational shopping ー and all this just to be able to always offer consumers something new and to make the customer journey as fast and uncomplicated as possible. What's behind all these trends and where are the differences really?
Social commerce - selling where your customers are
Social media platforms are still booming today. In recent years, the platforms have increasingly evolved from personal networks to strong marketing platforms for companies. With their own store systems, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Co. now offer sales-boosting store spaces with a large reach.
Example: Instagram Shop @gittibeauty
Social commerce is not just a current hype. The advantages, why you should also sell via your social channels, speak for themselves. So why not sell on the channels where your customers are active every day anyway?
Personality
Your channel on social media gives you as a retailer a face behind the company. Through postings, videos or stories, the target group usually gets to know the company in a completely different way. The personal relationship that this creates often leads to more purchases and increases your sales.
Impulse shopping
Through postings, ads and product tags, you rely in particular on impulse buying in social media. While the user scrolls through his profile, it only takes a few clicks to buy the products directly. The ads are displayed based on the user's behavior, reactions to other postings and the user's search history. This creates a personalized and individualized customer experience that aims to serve products to users who are most likely to buy them.
Interaction
Of course, you can also get in touch with your target group much faster and easier via social channels. Through reactions, comments, a personal chat or a quick live stream, you can interact with your followers.
Auch Live-Shopping ist hier eine beliebte Möglichkeit, Social Media als Verkaufsplattform und gleichzeitig zum Beziehungsaufbau mit deinen Kunden zu nutzen. Read our last blog post, Live Shopping - the future of e-commerce? to find out more!
Shopify x Social Commerce
Store systems are now also following suit and making it possible to integrate your Shopify store with social media channels. Your Shopify product catalog automatically synchronizes with your Facebook or Instagram store. Here you can easily create new categories and customize your store.
Of course, you can also use the store function of the meta platforms without Shopify. However, with the integration between the store and the various social media channels, you can expand your sales world and still manage everything centrally via the Shopify admin area.
Conversational Commerce
From the malls in the city centers - to webshops - to apps - and most recently, to messengers.
Conversational commerce, or c-commerce for short, refers to sales via messenger, chats and voice search. In short, sales via direct communication. The most important thing here is that communication takes place in the form of a dialog ー because that's where the difference lies. Even if a reaction or feedback is usually only possible with one click, communication on most channels only runs in one direction. There is seldom an exchange with one another. Conversational commerce, however, relies on precisely this method of direct exchange and a personal conversation ー even if it is digital.
Reminds in the first moment probably of the stationary variant, in which customer and salesman still talked personally. The customer was advised personally in order to ultimately find the perfect product for his or her needs. Why not go back to the roots digitally?
C-Commerce adds personality to e-commerce
Personality is still the trendy topic in e-commerce. How do I manage to pick up each individual customer digitally and build a personal bond? In e-commerce, personality often seems like an impossibility ー at least to the extent that customers are used to in brick-and-mortar stores. The C-Commerce trend is attempting to create an option here that incorporates as many components as possible: Create personality in online commerce via communication and exchange and still enable a quick and convenient conclusion of the purchase.
Shopping is no longer done via the online store or via a post on social media, but via personal customer contact in the form of chat, messenger services or communication with Siri, Alexa and Co.
This means that the field is also expanding to include messengers such as WhatsApp. Chat is no longer just a customer service touchpoint, but also a sales channel. A switch to the web store ー and thus an infinite number of possibilities to cancel the purchase ー are now history.
Checkout via Instagram Direct Message
Instagram, in particular, is moving ahead at a rapid pace in the area of conversational commerce. While Instagram Shopping has been possible for some time, Meta is already publishing the next variant for selling via Instagram: Order and tracking via DM.
Especially for smaller companies, Instagram DM's often functioned as a touchpoint for customer service. Questions about products are asked via Messenger and customers are personally advised via chat to encourage them to buy. Until now, however, the purchase and especially the payment were made via another app or the web store itself. That will all come to an end in the future!
In the United States, the checkout and tracking of the order has recently become possible entirely via Instagram Chat. Payment is made with just one click via Meta Pay.
Users can buy products from small businesses via a direct message on Instagram and pay with Meta Pay in the chat. Instagram thus offers a unique social customer experience and handles the entire customer journey without even having to switch channels ー it couldn't be faster or more convenient.
Summary
Social media platforms and messenger services are now part of everyday life for most people and it's hard to imagine life without them. It's time to sell where customers spend their time every day.
Social commerce or conversational commerce offer a huge opportunity to expand sales and increase revenues. The platforms now cover the entire customer journey and offer space for customer service and personal advice, while also serving as a sales channel. For small businesses in particular, it's an opportunity to build reach, significantly increase sales, and compete with large companies.
