Navigating the Social Commerce Landscape, Part 2

In part one of this series, I provided you with a “playbook” to not only better understand the e-commerce landscape, but to effectively navigate through the opportunities and challenges currently at hand. In part two, I examine what impact social media will have on retail going forward. In particular, I identify opportunities to bridge online and offline customer experiences in order to seamlessly integrate multiple touchpoints and selling channels.

Moving Beyond Social Listening
Listening to online conversations on their own sites has changed the way retailers do business. Marketers need to up the ante and start engaging customers via social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

More than simply joining the conversation on social networks, retailers must accelerate trust through a collective voice, leveraging all user-generated content (UGC) from credible community sources, as well as those engaged voices on social networks. This includes the following:

• staff experts;
• customer community experts;
• "people like me" (rely on social commerce solutions that encourage UGC to structure relevant data for better customer experiences); and
• brand experts.

Make it a priority to find out where your customers socialize, then take steps to get involved. Consider Nielsen’s finding that 90 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations. Add that to Hitwise Intelligence's data that revealed Facebook tops Google for weekly U.S. traffic. According to Retrevo's October 2009 Gadgetology Report, 46 percent of under 35-year-olds are using mobile phones to access Facebook.

PowerReviews’ 2010 Social Shopping Study points to Facebook as the social network that's most likely to influence purchase decisions. If it’s not already, Facebook should be a key component of your social strategy as open commerce becomes the standard. The first step is integrating the “Like” button on your website.

Striving for a customer experience that's seamless through multiple touchpoints should be a primary goal for retailers as the increased combinations of interactions with your brand and products continue to evolve.

Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink.com, coined the phrase “touchpoint amnesia” to signify the problem of customers having to repeat themselves as they move from one touchpoint to the next. Thompson’s research revealed that these experiences left customers 50 percent less likely to recommend a company with which they had undergone "touchpoint amnesia." Moreover, their purchase rates were 24 percent to 35 percent lower.

3 Ways to Seamlessly Integrate Multiple Touchpoints and Selling Channels

1. Avoid “touchpoint amnesia.” Ensure all selling channels save customer data, then integrate it seamlessly into every channel that customers would potentially interact with.
2. Own the end-to-end experience, or appoint someone who can (e.g., chief experience officer). 
Before you implement new processes, appoint one person to own the entire experience so that they can identify persistent challenges and critical areas needing improvement.
3. Tie cross-channel metrics to rewards/incentives/compensation in order to harmonize the cross-channel experience and avoid individually optimized departmental silos.

5 Retail Trends to Be Aware Of
Based on the findings of PowerReviews’ 2010 Social Shopping Study, the following are five trends that are critical for retailers to focus on as they attempt to bridge online and offline customer experiences in order to integrate multiple touchpoints and selling channels:

1. Control rests with consumers. Fifty percent of all purchases — in-store and online — involve researching products online first.
2. Research starts with search but ultimately happens on retailers’ sites. Social media isn't top of mind for search. While the majority of consumers (57 percent) begin research with a search engine, research primarily occurs on retailers’ sites (e.g., Amazon.com).
3. Consumers expect social tools for their research experience, but still engage mostly with the basics. While consumers have come to expect social tools, the basics continue to have the greatest impact on buying behavior — namely customer reviews, Q&As and community forums.
4. Consumers seek a variety of voices throughout the research experience to feel confident when making a buying decision. Friends and like-minded consumers have become more influential than experts. The top three online voices that have the biggest influence on purchase decisions are friends, “people like me” and experts.
5. Facebook is emerging as the social platform for researching/shopping. After the basic social tools (e.g., customer reviews, Q&A), Facebook features (e.g., wall, fan pages) were ranked to have the biggest impact on purchase decisions.

Pehr Luedtke is CEO of PowerReviews, a provider of social commerce solutions, including customer reviews, to retailers.