Social Commerce: what it is and why choose it for an ecommer

Since 2015, social commerce has received great attention because it is a phenomenon in great growth and with numerous opportunities for both users and brands. In fact, through social commerce , users can purchase products and services directly through social platforms , having the added bonus of sharing their shopping experiences. So here are the advantages and why this solution is having a lot of success.

What is Social Commerce

Before defining what social commerce is, it is important to understand what ecommerce is: it consists of a form of sale of products or services that takes place via the web, with different support platforms, created by agencies in the sector. Compared to a traditional sales activity, such as a shop, ecommerce has as advantages a reduction in fixed costs (utilities, rental of the building, employees) and the possibility of exploiting a web structure, much lighter and more flexible.

The social commerce is a specific ecommerce model that uses social networks and interaction platforms offered by sites to make online transactions.

The expression social commerce indicates a new form of electronic commerce that opens up to social networks in a more interactive way in order to reach customers, increase their participation and improve their shopping experience .

The advantages of Social Commerce

Among the main advantages of social commerce is that which does not just promote the purchase of a product or service, such as an ecommerce platform, but which involves all the phases that precede and follow the purchase, attracting the user, retaining it and improving its sales proposals thanks to the advice received from consumers.

With social commerce, in fact, the user has a new centrality in the market because the goal of the seller is to pursue the satisfaction of his customers through their better involvement on the reference social network. With social commerce it is possible to study its users through their online behavior and preferences, thus creating the perfect shopping experience for them. The brands that rely on social commerce are sure to get in touch with their target audience, calibrating the company's marketing choices based on the value and experience that users experience on social networks, sharing it in turn.

Among the main advantages of social commerce there are also virality, through the use of material such as videos or ad hoc images that have a high engagement, especially if proposed by influencers, the measurement of results through analytics tools that allow you to measure brand reputation and guide the marketing strategy, particularly in terms of content creation, and positioning, because Google tends to favor content deemed useful because it is shared over and over again by users.

Social commerce and social shopping: what are the differences

We often tend to confuse social commerce with social shopping , but there is a specific difference.

Social shopping represents the digital environments in which purchases are shared, while social commerce is an evolution of ecommerce filtered by social networks. Each company must therefore monitor social shopping, therefore sales-related conversations, even if in fact it does not practice social commerce.

Social commerce on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook Marketplace has been available for some time also in Italy and offers the possibility for users to see private ads or to create groups for sales purposes. Also in these cases, as for social commerce , the transaction is not foreseen, but only a contact between the seller and possible buyer. However, Facebook is slowly expanding the possibility of making payments, but this feature is currently active in beta only in the United States.

Another important novelty is Instagram which has launched some tools that simplify the users' purchase path, transforming the app almost into a virtual shop full of possibilities and proposals. Shopping on Instagram is identified by the presence of a handbag-shaped tag that offers some information on the product in question: this tool allows you to tag up to 5 products for each image. After deepening the information on a specific product, the "buy now" button allows you to complete the order through the company's online store.