Is your e-store ready for the ’social shopper’?
Lately there’s been talk of a new breed of online shopper - the social shopper, someone who looks to combine online shopping with social networking. These people look to, and even base buying decisions on, user-generated reviews of products and companies.
The e-tailing group released a report, commissioned by PowerReviews, the ‘Social Shopping Study‘ provides some compelling arguments for implementing reviews on your eCommerce store. For example:
- An amazing 82 percent found reading reviews better than researching a product in-store with a knowledgeable sales associate.
- Currently, 81 percent of consumers use customer reviews to decide between two or three products or to confirm that their final selection is the right one.
- 64 percent of Social Researchers research products online more than half the time, no matter where they buy the product (store, Web, catalog, etc.)
There are a few ways you can ‘hook’ the social shopper, but ultimately your best marketing is in the hands of your customers! To succeed with the social shopper, the first thing you need is to offer great products and exceptional customer service. It’s unrealistic to think everyone will have a fantastic shopping experience - so ensure you have a fool proof process for dealing with customer complaints or potential errors with your eCommerce page.
While implementing customer reviews on your eCommerce site is a great way to encourage reviews while keeping visitors on your site, it may not be feasible right now - especially so close to the holiday season. However, social shopping networking sites are exploding and savvy e-commerce marketers are monitoring what customers are saying about them (but NOT planting false reviews!)
One site I was recently discovered is Shoeboxed.com. This is a site where users can have all online purchases tracked through their own shoeboxed.com email address. (Which, BTW also acts as a filter for unwanted marketing messages - just another of many reasons to explicitly ask for an opt-in!) Also, you can scan in-store receipts and track off-line purchases as well. The social component is users can share their purchases with other users, and ’stereotype’ certain purchases. (Putting a fun twist on social tagging)
The opportunities for e-tailers here is that each store has its own profile, where the good folks at Shoeboxed.com actually invite you to edit details about your store. While this site is still quite new, I see lots of potential. (From a shopper’s perspective, this site is really fun, I don’t buy a lot online, but I’m already hooked!)
This trend is only going to get bigger, and the ’social shopper’ segment will continue to grow. Tap into these opportunities early and reap the rewards!
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Posted in Kelly Rusk, eCommerce
1 Comment
Dan Englander at 13:58 on November 16, 2007
Kelly,
This is a really great piece: thoughtful, researched, and well written. Over here at Shoeboxed, we are trying to give shoppers as much information as possible so that they can make the best decisions possible. We give them more information about themselves by organizing their receipts, which is an insightful exercise for many who don’t really know where exactly their money goes every month. We also allow our users to get more information from each other through social features that let them communicate about purchases, deals, and trends on and offline.
And finally, we want to give stores the opportunity to share information with their customers (and potential customers). Through our store pages (that stores can fill out), we hope to give easy access for our users to get more information about that store, including how much they spend there and any information the store wants to share with the Shoeboxed community, like exclusive deals, special company announcements, etc.
And the best part is that is all free.
Check it out today!
Dan
http://www.shoeboxed.com
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