The buzzword on everyone’s lips at the moment is social commerce. Social commerce, the area within social media that shows the most assurance, represents the change in the way people connect to social media. The future of social commerce does not refer to the traffics in Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, but it lays in the socially enabled E-Commerce sites such as Fab.com, Deb Shops or Coastal Contacts, say the researchers at 8th bridge. In the 2012 Social Commerce IQ Retail report, which was released today illustrated that the majority of successful internet retailers combine branding on social networks with social functionality in their individual websites.
The Infographic below is the overall abstracts of the report, which contains insights crunched from 475 companies. 78% of the top 500 internet retailers have adopted Pinterest in the last year; the virtual Pinboard created negligible traffic or conversions while, Facebook drives 20 times more traffic to retail sites than Pinterest.
The true value of Pinterest is in its Interest Graph, which connects users to each other by what they pin like rather than by their relationships. It can be a great thought for brands to learn about their customers from the way they arrange their pins on their boards.
Also, 8thbridge chief product officer Jon Kubo noted that users Share brands on Facebook but not a particular item , for example users share brand page of Burberry but not a particular item in it.
Interestingly, towards that end, Facebook recently rolled out Collections – a Pinterest-style board for brand pages, but, they did not engage the customers in the same way that Pinterest did, Kubo said. While, 51% of companies has incorporated the Pin-It button and 35% of companies researched had apps on Facebook which were either not functioning or were out of date.
70% of respondents would hear about a new product from a Facebook friend rather than a brand. 57% have asked their friends on Facebook for advice on product before buying. It’s worth to note, more Facebook “like”, doesn’t mean the user is likely to buy that product.
8thbridge has ranked “Fab.com” in the first position, in-terms of successful sites, which have marked themselves in the criteria’s such as, socially integrated, those that are in transition and those having huge following through branding on other social networks. While, Deb Shops and Coastal Contacts gain, 2nd and 3rd position respectively.
Social commerce has excited everyone like never before as it is the single biggest opportunity to monetize social media, both in terms of brands and social platforms. The benefit to companies is that they have various keys to experiment with social commerce to get benefited.
