Social Shopping Of The Future

Social commerce is expected to be big this year, with brands and retailers always exploring new and creative ways to capitalize on its ever increasing popularity. Retailers are going beyond just normal Facebook pages and Twitter profiles with which their customers can follow. Web retailers are adding to this trend by using social sign-on which allows retailers to have access to detailed profile information by means of Facebook profile data etc. which is very useful for customer targeting.

This type of data has been found to influence customers at a stage when they are near to conversion. A survey carried out last year by a company that provide social sign-on applications found that over 50% of online retailers had already began using this service or had plans to do so in the near future.

The study also found that this feature can be very beneficial to retailers who can offer customers special deals such as promotions and discount coupons. Retailers can also gain an insight into what information social network users have written in their profiles and what products or services they have ‘liked’ on other sites.

It was announced last year that 20 million people showed their interest in companies and services by ‘becoming a fan’ of fan pages every day. This is a sure sign that consumers are not afraid to communicate and interact with brands on Facebook. With social media optimisation it is likely to only be a matter of time before many online retailers will begin to sell their products or services on social media platforms.

A possible issue that does need to be considered is online privacy with this form of targeting. This is already considered to be quite problematic for social networking sites. However interestingly since 2006 fewer internet users have been limiting their personal information.