Social Shopping and the Brand Experience

Denise Zimmerman, president and chief strategy officer of NetPlus Marketing Inc., has spent the past 18 years of her career focusing on the emerging digital landscape and best practice applications in marketing, advertising and communications. She talks to eMarketer about the different forms social commerce takes and how retailers can understand it.

eMarketer: Why do people like to follow a brand on its Facebook fan page?

Denise Zimmerman: That answer depends on the retailer you’re talking about and how they use the platform. This is an interesting challenge for retailers, too. Because of the kind of communications and messaging you’re talking about, social media demands a very intense, thoughtful plan and approach in terms of what we call brand.

And not all of them have been good at this. I think Best Buy kind of breaks the mold. Zappos certainly does. Target does. Some of your larger retailers understand and cultivate their brand, and they can tell you what their brand is. But there are a whole host of them whose marketing, for the most part, historically has reflected commodity-type marketing—price promotion and very DM-focused—which is why they initially really latched onto affiliate marketing, search marketing, pay-for-performance type stuff. But when you’re out there in terms of communicating on these sorts of platforms, you really have to consider what is your brand. Your brand could be about price.

eMarketer: How much social commerce actually takes place on Facebook?

“If you successfully connect and make shopping valuable to the community in a way that’s easy and accessible and meets their needs, it’s a no-brainer.”

Ms. Zimmerman: I know that just when I’m out there and I regularly check what’s going on, I connect to a lot of these folks myself. I think it’s a natural evolution. Maybe I’m biased, but I don’t think so. If you successfully connect and make shopping valuable to the community in a way that’s easy and accessible and meets their needs, it’s a no-brainer.

eMarketer: Retail Websites are offering more and more social shopping features such as Facebook Connect. Do such features pose a competitive threat to social shopping sites or do they complement each other?

Ms. Zimmerman: I think they sort of complement each other. When we develop what we call a socially enabled Website, we don’t even like to call it a Website. We call it a social hub, which is really an evolution of the Website experience. So it should be really an experiential extension of the brand or of the retailer. When somebody goes to your Website, what they experience there should be reflective of the brand and however that expresses itself in terms of functionality, design, features and all that sort of thing.

“The social aspect is really an evolution of the brand experience.”

I think the social aspect is really an evolution of the brand experience. The big question from a very, very tactical perspective is the level of investment in terms of the technology, in terms of how you want to really enable your site: What’s going to really enhance that experience and furthermore what’s going to ultimately drive the sale?

The priority of a retailer is to focus on enhancing that shopping experience in how it actually influences the purchase. And there might be some community aspects to that. This comes down to really understanding your customers, understanding their shopping behavior, understanding what they want, understanding how they’re currently interacting with your site, understanding where your sales are coming from.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007322

small business ecommerce

Here's a great explanation of what you need to do if you're a small business wanting to sell stuff online.

(from http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/strauss/2009-09-21-putting-your-business-on-the-web_N.htm )

Step 1: Notice what works: Whether it is eBay, Amazon, or your own favorite, e-commerce sites that succeed tend to do the same things right:

• They are attractive, intuitive, engaging, and easy to navigate
• They offer plenty of inventory
• They are easy to shop and check-out
• There are discounts and specials (coupons, free shipping, etc.)
• They offer great customer service

Step 2. Consider the competition. Who else sells what you want to sell? Take a look at the players both big and small. Buy some merchandise from them and ask yourself – what do they do right, and wrong, and how can it be it be improved?

Step 3. Pick your products: If you are in business and have products that you already sell, then adding them to your online store is easy: Take pictures of them, add them to your online catalogue (see below) and write some great copy.

If you don't know what you want to sell, then consider your options. There are tons of wholesalers and distributors from which to choose. If you don't know of any, I would suggest you surf over to my site –MrAllBiz.com– and check out the wholesale product search engine we offer. You can find wholesalers for just about any product you are looking for.

Note: The culture of the Web is one of discounts, keep that in mind, and remember that selling expensive items online is more difficult.

Step 4. Create a great site: You have about five seconds once someone finds your site to impress them enough that they will decide to poke around a bit and maybe buy something. That means your site must be graphically pleasing to the eye, unique, and useful.

Step 5. Consider drop shipping: What if you just want to get your feet wet and don't want to spend a lot of money discovering whether this online universe is for you? Then check out drop shipping. Drop shipping is an arrangement between you and a wholesaler whereby you offer their products on your site but you don't actually physically stock any inventory. If someone clicks and buys, notice is sent to you and the wholesaler, the wholesalers ships the product using your labels and logos, and you split the profit.

If you think this is a great way to get started, you are right. There are no products to buy and stock, no huge up-front costs, no labor expenses, etc. You can find drop shippers for most any product by doing an online search, or again, by typing "drop shipping" into the product search engine at my site.

Step 6. Build your store: There are two parts to your online store – the front end and the back end. The front end is what the world sees – your products for sale, specials, policies, and so on. The back end is what you see – inventory control, reports of what sells, etc.

You will need to find an online partner / Web host to help you build your store. Their software will create both the front end and the back end. It will allow you to create thumbnails of your products as part of your overall online catalogue.

What you want is a partner that offers

• Pre-designed, customizable templates
• Inventory support
• Easy acceptance of credit cards
• Search engine optimization
• Easy adding and subtracting of products
• Up-selling tools, coupons, gift certificates, etc.
• Real time stats and reports
• Secure transactions, and
• Plenty of support

Step 7. Handle sales: To be able to accept online sales, you will need a merchant account (an account with a credit card issuer) and / or the ability to accept PayPal payments. You will also need to be able to handle inquiries, returns, exchanges, and refunds. Don't underestimate shipping and related costs either.

Plenty of other small businesses have made the leap to online success, and if they did it, so can you.