Social Commerce

Social commerce is all the rage these days. Within the last three months, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram have rolled out "Buy" buttons, and Twitter announced it's extending its "Buy" button to 100,000 merchants. Retailers are finding that if done right (read: not overly pushy or "salesy"), selling products via social media is a viable option.…

Last month, Pinterest debuted what might be a shopper’s ultimate dream: Buyable Pins. Gone are the days of clicking on the pin of something you’d like to buy and hoping it takes you to a website where you can purchase it. Soon, with the click of a pin, buyers will have immediate access to purchasing…

Facebook wants to be more than a place to socialize, share, and discover content. It wants you to shop inside it as well. The company is building out shops within Facebook Pages, essentially mini e-commerce sites that give businesses a chance to set up second homes within its walls. The shops are still in the…

The hottest topic in e-commerce these days seems to be “buy buttons.” The energy though appears premature. Pinterest announced its buyable pins with a press conference and sentimental Hallmark-like videos, though the buyable pins are actually hard to find. Facebook, the king of all social networks, announced a buy button more than a year ago,…

Pinterest entered into the e-commerce space last week when it finally began rolling out "Buyable Pins." The new pins generated big demand from sellers anxious to try the new feature for themselves. The new Buyable Pins are basically ads that allow users to purchase items featured in the pins (not to be confused with Promoted…

In the era of customer-driven commerce, merchants are sometimes painfully aware that they're not in the driver’s seat anymore. Shoppers empowered with greater access to information than ever before now expect to be able to browse and purchase products anytime, from anywhere, on any device they choose, all in speedy, seamless transactions. Merchants might be…

For the past 20 years, the internet has transformed the way we seek information, communicate with one another and conduct business. With the explosion of social networks and mobile technology, we're no longer just consumers. We're now and forever the “connected consumer.” In just the first half of 2015, we’ve seen the latest attempt to…

Facebook's "Buy" button may be one step closer to a wider rollout, as e-commerce provider Shopify announced an expansion of its beta test with the social network. Shopify said in a blog post that it's expanding its beta test of Facebook’s buy button to “a group of U.S.-based Shopify merchants.”

Thus far, “Facebook commerce” has flopped. Efforts by retailers, from Express to Urban Outfitters, to sell merchandise directly on the social network via virtual shops, “news feed stores” or catalogs have returned a negligible return on investment, at best. Experts say that failure reflects the mind-set of consumers when they’re on the site: they're not…