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Tag Archives: Social Commerce
Trust does not equal influence – be careful how you interpret the data
The new Nielsen trust report is out. (Write up at Social Commerce Today.) Duck - here come the inflated claims from social commerce companies about how this proves the effectiveness of what they do. The problem is, it's not that simple. First, here's the data: The temptation is to conclude that because "recommendations from people I know" are most-trusted, a sure-fire strategy is to get your customers to recommend your stuff to their friends. The problem is that the whole reason friends are trusted is because they WON'T recommend your stuff to their friends - not unless they sincerely and spontaneously ... read more
InkJetSuperStore wins award for Social Media Marketing
Congratulations to InkJetSuperStore for winning the Social Media Marketing category of Retail TouchPoints’ Customer Engagement Awards 2012! You can read Retail TouchPoint's article here and download the complete Customer Awards Report from there, but in a nutshell it was through a nomination process, the winners were selected based on, but not limited to, four specific criteria: Unique shopping/promotional offerings Customer engagement strategies Customer analysis Technology innovation Using the TurnTo technology, InkJetSuperStore has increased conversion, AOV, and loyalty. Here are some of the results from the past couple of months. Shoppers who asked questions or read Q&A from others converted at a rate 80% higher than those who didn't ... read more
The OL effect – an easy way to improve sales that you’re probably not doing
This is such an important validation of the effectiveness of social merchandising that, if we'd thought of it, we would have commissioned a market research firm to write this study for us. But, even better, it's actually a peer-reviewed article produced by a team of university marketing professors and published in the journal of the American Marketing Association, the Journal of Marketing Research. It's titled: Online Social Interactions: A Natural Experiment on Word of Mouth Versus Observational Learning. (There's also a nice write-up and interview with the lead author on Red Orbit.) The findings are straight-forward: Online, as in the physical ... read more
Are you teaching a class when you should be hosting a party?
Most brands' and stores' greatest single asset is the goodwill of their customers. And most do little to leverage this goodwill for marketing gain. There's a fallacy in marketing land that just because you have a presence on social networks, you are doing "social" marketing. But when you look a bit closer, you see that most social initiatives by brands look a lot like traditional marketing and merchandising, just in a new place. The essential idea of "social commerce" is: connect your shoppers and customers directly to each other. Not only does this help turn your shoppers into customers, ... read more
What to do if your “social” Q&A doesn’t actually get social answers?
To date, Q&A on ecommerce sites has been primarily a tag-along application to customer reviews (provided by vendors that specialize in customer reviews). This approach results in a Q&A model that's more like customer reviews than a true social experience between shoppers and customers, missing the benefits that a truly social approach to ecommerce Q&A provides. The key to Social Q&A is that shopper questions should reliably and quickly get answered by real customers, and participants should have the ability to go back-and-forth beyond the initial question, if they choose to. If shopper questions receive customer answers only rarely ... read more
As the relationship between content and commerce evolves, community will become key
It used to be simpler. Advertising was the main bridge between content and commerce. If you had the sort of business that generated an audience (a content business), you'd monetize that by selling ad space to the sort of businesses that sold "stuff" (a commerce business). Then, along came the internet, and the amount that content businesses could get paid per eyeball fell drastically relative to the old print world. The content businesses that worked online were those that either developed a radically lower cost of content creation (esp social) or those that were able to generate vastly more eyeballs. But ... read more
Surprising similarities between Q&A for education and for shopping
It is interesting to see that the same message-based approach that is finally making social Q&A work for ecommerce is also making social Q&A work for education. Today's New York Times profiles a new site called Piazza, which enables students to get help from classmates through a Q&A model. As the Times describes it: Although there are rival services, like Blackboard, an education software company, Piazza’s platform is specifically designed to speed response times. The site is supported by a system of notification alerts, and the average question on Piazza will receive an answer in 14 minutes. That's ... read more
If social media is no good for ecommerce, is social commerce DoA?
Forrester and GSI just released a study by star analyst Sucharita Mulpuru showing social networks are not effective channels for ecommerce. The oldies - email and search marketing - perform far better. (Available free on the GSI website here. Data cited in Mashable here.) In a universe of endless, self-promotional, vendor-funded studies, this one should get more than it's share of your attention because the sponsors gain nothing (but credibility) from spreading these conclusions. In the face of this withering evidence, we think it's a good moment to review the distinction between social media marketing and social commerce. Social media marketing is ... read more
Is it really coming to this: social commerce = pay-for-share?
I now count 6 start-ups offering tools that enable online stores to pay their customers for posting to Facebook about the things they've bought. The flavors and features vary, but pay-for-share is the core mechanism for all of them. The model that seems to be getting most traction looks like this: 1. Offer the customer a discount for posting news of their purchase to Facebook (and Twitter). 2. Assure the customer that by posting they are also providing a discount to their friends. (With some of these tools, I've been unable to figure out how the friends actually get their discount, but that's ... read more
Video of Tuesday’s FastPivot-TurnTo webinar: Social Q&A for eCommerce
Here's the full video from our webinar on Tuesday with our partner and leading Yahoo Store design and development shop FastPivot. It's about an hour.
Full price is dying. Social is the perp.
As discussed in a couple recent posts (one, two), it's much harder to get people to share purchase-related information than other types of personal news and content. And the type of sharing you can get people to do in bulk ("contextual sharing") is more limited than the broadcast-to-all-your-friends type that most merchants dream about. But there's one big exception: discounts! Discount offers and social are a perfect symbiosis. Access to deals is the #1 reason people fan brands on Facebook (driving brands to offer more deals to get more fans). Deal-a-day services (Groupon, LivingSocial) and private sale sites (Gilt, Rue La ... read more
What works in purchase sharing
Last month, I wrote about the challenges of social commerce - in particular, why it's so hard to get people to share purchase-related information. And I promised I'd follow up with a more optimistic post about an approach that's working. We call this "contextual sharing". Try this: Ask a random sample of people how they feel about telling their friends about recent purchases. Most of the people you ask will probably give you an answer like this: once in a while they'll tell some friends about some purchases, but the idea of mass-sharing their purchases is repulsive. Now ask them how ... read more
A webinar just for Yahoo! Stores: Social Q&A for eCommerce
For Yahoo! Stores Join us and leading Yahoo Store services provider FastPivot for a webinar on: Social Q&A for eCommerce Tuesday, March 29, 2011 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT Register here Question-and-Answer systems are one of the hottest topics on the social web. Now learn how to use Social Q&A on your store to increase conversions, bring past customers back, improve your SEO rankings, and drive fresh traffic from social networks. The goodwill of your customer base is the #1 asset of your business. Don't leave it locked away. Adding Social Q&A to your store can release this untapped goodwill to generate more sales ... read more
How to Leverage Social When Visitors Are Shopping Onsite?
This is a reprint of a guest post I wrote for ZippyCart, originally published there on February 22. Beyond marketing and customer service, Social has the power to help convert visitors on retail sites. A large majority of online retailers today are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. These platforms have been used for brand marketing and customer service. Retailers are beginning to explore their utilities as sales tools. When it comes to selling, these platforms are in essence today’s equivalent of shoppers signing up to direct mailing lists. Shoppers give ... read more
Why Social Commerce is so hard
I was recently on a Social Commerce panel (photos here) for Social Media week hosted by Digitas in NYC. (Thanks Beth McCabe, Noah Mallin, Jonathan Burg, and fellow panelists Matty de Castro of Facebook and Bob Tuttle of 8th Bridge!). One of my fellow panelists put up a screen shot of the Levi's Friends Store as an example of Social Commerce and provided an opening I couldn't resist. Look in the lower right: Levi's has 2.9m Facebook fans. That's 2.9m people who have agreed to allow Levi's to send them messages in Facebook. Not bad! Now look at the Original ... read more
Next TurnTo Webinar: Beyond Facebook “Like” and Twitter
You've implemented Facebook "Like," have a fanpage, post on Twitter, but haven't seen a real return on using Social Networks? Register now for TurnTo's 45 minute Webinar taking place on Wednesday September 22nd at 2:30PM Eastern. We'll take a look at how you can increase conversions 2-5X above your baseline by providing your shoppers with a way for them to connect with people they know and other shoppers directly in the shopping cycle. See why over 50 online stores have implemented TurnTo's powerful and lightweight Social Commerce Suite. Simply email bnettle@turnto.com to register and we'll send details on the upcoming webinar. We look ... read more
Social Commerce insights from the TurnTo – FastPivot webinar
Together with our partner, leading Yahoo Store builder FastPivot, we produced this webinar on Social Commerce strategies on Wednesday. Here are all the slides plus the complete audio (controls are just under the slides). Thanks to the many attendees! The FastPivot part runs through slide 35. They provide a broad overview of social media marketing packed with actionable recommendations. Starting at slide 36, we do an 18 minute discussion of Onsite Social for e-Commerce. If I do say so myself: it too is insightful and practical. Enjoy! Social Media Takes Muscles: : A Workout for Improving Conversion and Merchandising View more webinars ... read more
The “Right Time” Web and Social Commerce
I gave this presentation at the MIT Enterprise Forum of NY a year and a half ago. The NY Times Bits blog piece today on comments by Venrock's Brian Ascher about the "Right Time Web" made me dust it off. I tidied it up a bit (but not much). My predictions about the imminent arrival of the "Trusted Reference" model in the e-commerce world were at least a year too soon - I left those unchanged. (Brian's colleague David Pakman also blogged about this in the spring.) The "Trusted Reference" Model for Social Commerce View more presentations from TurnTo Networks.
TripAdvisor’s new Facebook integration shows the future of social commerce
If you sell online and haven't seen TripAdvisor's new Facebook integration, check it out. It's a great example of what the future of social commerce is going to look like. Go to any destination page on www.tripadvisor.com and look for the blue box to the right of the image. Here's what it looks like for me for Zurich: There are three aspects of this application that point the way to the future. Context. You could get the information displayed here - which of your friends has been to a place you're researching - by going to the TripAdvisor Cities-I've-Visited app. ... read more
Introducing the TurnTo Social Commerce Suite
It’s a big day at TurnTo: we’re introducing our Social Commerce Suite. (Yes, we know that it’s ambitious to call it a “Suite” with just 2 products – please humor us. Also, there’s more in the pipeline…) Official press release here. So what’s new? 1. We’ve done a nearly complete overhaul of our current product, now branded “Social Merchandising” and 2. We’re introducing a new product called “Social Purchase Sharing”. Social Merchandising. We’ve made improvements top to bottom. Shoppers who open the widget but don’t personalize it by checking for friends will now ... read more
New whitepaper out: Onsite Social for Online Retail
After over a year in the market helping a few dozen innovative online retailers add social shopping features to their stores, we thought it was time to synthesize and share the big lessons we've learned. So here is our new whitepaper: Onsite Social for Online Commerce. In it, we get specific about things like: How to leverage social networks for Social Merchandising within your store How to most effectively encourage shoppers to share news of their purchases with their social network friends Why adding Social to ecommerce sites requires different strategies than for content sites What sort of results are realistic to expect We're ... read more
For ecommerce sites, “Like” is OK, but “Bought” is much better
First: we wholeheartedly agree with the ideas underlying Facebook's big announcements today. People want to be able to interact with their friends on sites all across the web, not just within Facebook. And sites don't all want to have to become Facebook apps to support this. TurnTo has been working to enable contextual delivery of social networks on ecommerce sites since our founding in 2007. And we've proved that the benefits for both shoppers and merchants are significant. So we applaud Facebook, appreciate the validation that their heading in this direction provides, and are already hard at work incorporating their new ... read more
Forrester TechRadar report on Social Commerce cites TurnTo
Forrester retail guru Sucharita Mulpuru recently published her latest TechRadar report on Social Commerce. Available from Forrester here. And for free download from ATG here. We were pleased to be included as one of a select group of vendors profiled in the report. It's a great resource for retailers in planning their approach to social. Here's the chart that summarizes it all in one place:
Recommended reading: Optaros on the power of Social Shopping
Optaros' "Social Ecommerce Ebook" makes for great reading if you are trying to optimize the performance of your ecommerce site. You can download it here. They make the points that: 1. higher levels of shopper engagement on retail sites drive improved business performance, and 2. social commerce tools are a powerful way to drive engagement. A couple highlights: From the Harvard Business Review Article, "In Ecommerce, More is More", they cite, The majority of managers we spoke to in our global study told us they believe that a broad array of information diverts attention from the core offerings. But we found it helps ... read more
Do promotions help retailers’ bottom line more than investments in social tools et al?
Data from comScore as reported in the Wall Street Journal shows holiday sales up 4% over last year. Not bad considering the economy. But the growth appears to be driven largely by a huge increase in promotions: "Data from Shoplocal.com show that online retailer promotion activity is continuing at a high rate with the number of offers in the last week up 21% versus a year ago," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. The strong sales numbers won't mean much if the January headlines are all about the carnage from over-discounting. (Remember the joke about making up for negative margin on volume?...) I'd ... read more
A great perspective on what social commerce really means
Paul Dunay, The Global Managing Director for Services and Social Media at Avaya, gave this description of social commerce in an interview in eMarketer: Social commerce is working with or using your social graph, which is defined as your followers or your friends, and allowing them to help you make buying decisions. Social commerce can be anything from a buying suggestion or recommendation—perhaps a tweet from a Dell outlet saying, “Hey, we have a special on this”—to something like Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect would allow you to go to a Website like Dell.com and authenticate yourself using your Facebook ... read more
TurnTo is in the Wall Street Journal today
Here's the full article: http://bit.ly/14Wl0n And here's what they have to say about us: New York-based TurnTo Networks Inc., for example, which was launched in September, helps retailers link their customer accounts with social-networking accounts and email accounts using Facebook Connect and other tools. TurnTo charges retailers a percentage of the revenue from sales attributed to the system. Tea retailer Teavana Corp. is a TurnTo client. Jay Allen, Teavana’s vice president of e-commerce, says the conversion rate—a measure of how many shoppers make purchases—for people who use the application is 20% higher than the rate for others, and their average orders ... read more
Thought leaders predict social shopping among top trends for ’09
Peter Kim asked a handful of thought leaders in the social media space to give their predictions for the top trends of '09. Here are a couple related to social commerce: Charlene Li: Shopping Goes Social (also reprinted on her own blog) After a devastating holiday season, retailers will eagerly seek a way to improve results other than driving demand with deeper discounts. One option they will investigate will be how to insert people and social connections into the buying process, illuminating and influencing for the first time the Black Hole Of Consideration. As they lick their wounds in the first half ... read more
What should online merchants do with Facebook Connect?
The New York Times ran a piece today heralding the imminent arrival of Facebook Connect - significant as an indication of the huge expected impact of the feature. My guess is that for brands and online merchants planning their social commerce strategy, the anticipation of Facebook Connect will be matched by an equal measure of head-scratching about how to make the best use of it. Its predecessor, Beacon, had significant flaws. But for merchants, it also had a particular beauty - clarity of purpose. It did just one thing (sending "stories" to their customers' Facebook pages so friends could see what ... read more