Starting from clothes to favorite foods, ordering online is not a new thing anymore. With digitalisation and growth of social media, buying things, directly, from social media platforms has also become generic. The question remains is what makes social commerce different from e-commerce? In layman’s terms, social commerce is a subset of e-commerce. It is nothing but usage of social media in promoting and selling products or services. In this case, the consumers and sellers interact with each other, through direct mediums, which results in a ‘new-age’ online shopping experience. Seemingly, both the consumers and sellers can benefit from the ‘interactive’ nature of digital media platforms. Media reports suggest that brands are, constantly, improvising their way of working through introducing live solutions. From consumers’ perspective, this is more like watching a live stream but with the purpose to buy a product, also called livestream shopping. Brands offer shopping experiences for consumers by including live chats, live video shopping and shopping cart integration as well. But what about platforms? Which platforms are used mostly for social commerce? Mentioned here is a list, exclusively, based on our observations:
Reportedly, Facebook is the social media platform where marketers drive social retail sales. For brands who want to step into social commerce, they can start with Facebook. According to Meta guidelines, anybody can open a shop on Facebook using a business account. Consumers can view available products on the brand’s Facebook page. New social commerce-based brands can also start a test shop where they can evaluate customer experience, other than managing orders.
Considered one of the popular social media platforms, Instagram has also shaped into a platform for social commerce-oriented practices. With sellers being able to build brand awareness, this platform can create the ‘appeal’ factor for shoppers. Consumers can buy products from Instagram which are shown to them through image or video formats. Every available product, on Instagram, has their own page where description of the products, along with videos or images, are available.
A social media platform, dedicated to images, Pinterest is another medium where sellers and buyers can engage with each other.In this platform, most product searches are unbranded. users can search for their desired items both through the brand or product name. From what it’s understood, sellers have the ability to reach out to potential buyers, who are not aware of the merchant’s products but have an income range to invest in products.
