Buyers have been driving this by ‘liking’ or ‘tweeting’ what they have bought through social media and the sellers have been scratching their heads wondering how they can best take advantage of this. The experience of organisations like Gap has shown that is not just a case of taking their usual in-store or e-commerce approach and putting it onto social media platforms. The Brand’s global ‘Be Bright’ campaign was anchored with a new social hub site at the Styld.by URL. The site takes on the style of a blog but promotes the products through most social channels.

Converting ‘likes’ to sales

A whole new approach is required, one that is best exemplified by Pinterest, a social media site setup for retailers to interact with potential customers. By focusing on striking visuals and imagery it offers the ideal platform for lifestyle brands to reach out to customers. Successful retail users of this site have realised that by allowing a potential customer the ability to click through on a compelling image it is more likely to create a sale than just putting a complete catalogue online. We are pleased to highlight the good work by Plum Baby on setting up and running their own Pinterest board, it is gaining momentum quickly!

Pinterest is not alone; there is now a whole raft of tools as well as add-on functionality for businesses on sites like Facebook, so retailers need to be looking closely how best to engage. Even those retailers with extensive investment in ‘bricks and mortar’ stores, like Tesco, are testing the water. Tesco have just launched a social commerce wine site that allows buyers to club together to purchase wine at discounted prices.

The company driving the Tesco wine push is Buyapowa , they sum up the current business model as ” Your key distribution partners are used to buying at one price, retail customers at another. They are also used to having influence over your range where the general public are not. All that has changed – now your actual customers have the potential to become key distribution partners themselves.”

So what is in it for the end customer apart from spreading your products around their networks? Well buyapower say it more than that, “The buyer who brings in most other buyers gets their product free. So they do it again – and so the cycle continues”. A very powerful marketing tool indeed.

So, if you are in the retail space, start looking at social commerce now!

You might think such an event is something for the future but actually (according to VC firm KBPC) global PC shipments were overtaken by Smartphone and tablet shipments back in Q4 2010. It is also predicted that the global installed base of PCs will fall behind Smartphones and tablets by Q2 this year. Interestingly, according to MIT, Smartphones are spreading faster than any previous technology in human history – from 5% to 40% in 4 years!

Is your Web site ready?

As a user of mobile technology you will have no issue with this, but as business owner who needs to promote your goods and services over the Internet, have you considered the implications for your online promotion strategy?

In particular your Web site that was designed a few years ago may look great on 15” laptop, but what does it look like on 4” Smartphone screen? Do all the key messages appear on the screen, or does your potential customer have to scroll down or across to see what you are offering? Do the menus still work or are they obscured?

Device responsive sites are the future

The fact is you now have to ensure your Web site has been designed and coded to cope with the post-PC era. It needs to be able to adapt to whatever device it is being viewed on to ensure the key messages/themes are displayed to best advantage.

This is something Devstars understands. We are already building device responsive sites like http://www.martinalanger.com/ that display perfectly, whatever the device. So, make sure you’re ready for the mobile future and have another look at your Web site – on a mobile device.

To show the work at it’s best we’ve incorporated full screen images and browser detection so you only get the image size you need.

The product section links directly into The Light Corporations main web site so items that are tagged marine specific will appear on the satellite site.

more info here

The leaders on the list include Petflow.com at number one, followed Fab.com and Coastal Contacts in third. Of the three, Fab is probably the most widely regarded within social commerce.

The percentage of total site traffic coming in from social Media varies widely between the top three. PetFlow.com, brings in 30 %  – mostly as a result of a laser-like focus on building a maintaining a loyal Facebook fan base and regular posts that speak to their followers’ inner pet lover,” said the guide, while Fab.com achieved 25%.

Additionally, the guide revealed Fab received up to one-third of its sales – $50 million – from social media. For fab.com it is more than just registering customers against sales either. “We’re really trying to build customers for a lifetime, and social is a way for us to do that,” said Fab.com founder and CEO Jason Goldberg.

A list of metrics covered in the report are:-

• Ranking of online retailers by percentage of 2012 traffic derived from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest
• 2012 social commerce sales figures
• Average conversion rates and order values for visits from social networks
• Data on visits to e-commerce sites that directly stem from the major social networks
• Breakdown of e-retailers’ presences on the major social networks, including counts of Facebook fans, Twitter and Pinterest followers and YouTube video views
• An engagement analysis of merchants’ fans and followers—i.e., how often consumers respond to, by sharing and taking action on, the content e-retailers push out on social networks
• A total breakdown of merchants’ on-site social features and functions, as well as Facebook and social features and functions
• A comprehensive vendor section that profiles the leading social consultants, platform providers, app developers, analytics and other social networking and marketing providers
• How-to articles from social platform and analytics providers, as well as consultants and other social commerce technology companies
• An overview article that surveys the differences in e-retailers’ strategies for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks
• In-depth interviews and analysis of what social commerce sales figures mean to online retailers

If you are serious about your Social Commerce then we would suggest you have a read!

You are probably aware of Google offering products to buy whilst you are searching a product. The shopping results area, launched as froogle, is often used as a fast route to an e-commerce purchase.

Google uses submitted Product feeds for the Google Shopping area and, for the moment, this is a free resource managed via your Google Merchant centre. The trick is to know how to build a feed for submission.

We have built a number of feeds over the past 12 months and all of the clients have noticed a boost in sales whilst the feed is active. The feeds needs to be managed well and cannot be left to run themselves for more than 3 or 4 months as Google will often tweak the parameters. The one major change on the horizon is following the US lead where you need to have a Google ad-word account linked to merchant centre. The new model is built on Product Listing Ads. The planned extension to the US model is set to roll out in February 2013 across 10 countries including the UK and Australia. Google are offering promotional credit. Merchants who apply and create a Product Listing Ad campaign promoting all of their products in Merchant Center by 12 April 2013.

Amazon offer similar tools via their Pro Merchant Service and will charge you for having a selling account.

As important as submitting your products into the feed, is the need to be trustworthy. The simplest way to achieve this is to encourage customers to write a good review on your site. Many feeds and search engines pull in reviews to enhance their shopping results. To qualify, you will need to set up a feed or use a 3rd party to organise this for you.

https://www.ekomi.co.uk/uk/ can help but we think that £299 a month is a little pricy

http://www.powerreviews.com/ is another such tool concentrating on the social side. Prices must also be high as I need to request them via a form. They must be good though, as they have Staples, Gap and Toy’r’Us in their client list.

Devstars can of course build you your own review system as we did for Plum Baby, we can then submit this to various feeds so you hopefully look as good as you can.

If you need to advertise your products to appear within search results, please do not hesitate to drop us a line.