Terms like social commerce, Facebook commerce and social shopping are making headlines. Nearly every retailer is trying tap into the 750 million potential shoppers on Facebook. The one thing missing is what it really means to make your e-commerce efforts social.
That's because social commerce is more than just putting up a Facebook storefront and adding a “Like” button to your products. To truly fulfill the promise of social commerce, you need to take full advantage of the Facebook ecosystem. This means enabling social promotion and discovery of products based on a consumer's social graph — i.e., what their friends and similar people like. It also means integrating conversation into the shopping experience, allowing shoppers to interact directly with your reps and ask questions about products just as they would at a physical store location.