Social commerce is the process of selling products directly on social media. Through social commerce, the entire shopping experience takes place on social media platforms. The most popular social media platforms for social commerce are Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and TikTok.

Social Commerce: Tips and Stats

Important! social commerce is not e-commerce. E-commerce involves buying and selling goods through a website or an app. Social commerce is about selling products through social media, without leaving the platform. Social commerce allows the user to visit the website, discover products, and buying without leaving the platform.

Social commerce allows the customer to have access to their favorite social media, have a shopping experience, and also they can share this with friends and family.

1. Social Commerce Stats

40% of Gen Z and Millennials have bought a product while watching a live stream on a social media platform.

53% of people said they like to carefully research the product online before buying. Only 12% said they buy something right away after seeing it on social media.

2. Social Commerce – Gen Z and Millennials

This new method of shopping is popular and keeps growing in the United States. Stats show that the number of US social commerce buyers grew by 25.2% in 2020 and will grow another 12.9% in 2021.

US retail social commerce sales will rise by 34.8% this year, representing 4.3% of all retail e-commerce sales.

Brands know that people spend a lot of time searching online. (Pandemic Effect). So brands decided to get in front of the customer through apps they are spending most of their time on.

The main targets for social commerce are Gen Z and Millennials. 97% of Gen Z consumers use social media as their top source of shopping inspiration.

40% follow brands they like on social media. 68% of Gen Z customers read or watch at least three reviews before a first-time purchase.

Millennials: 72 million in the US, They have consistent spending power, they seek experiences, and they buy a lot online!.

Social commerce is here to stay as it provides a great opportunity for small businesses, provides reliable data, and allows influencers to become more involved.

A small business with a storefront, before COVID-19, was only successful if it was discovered by people in its surrounding area and had some sort of popularity.

Small businesses now are beginning to win big brands because of the power and ease of social media. Also is a great way to track how long a user stays on the website and which products they like.

These days influencer marketing becomes seamless with social commerce and clickable links that lead straight to the product.

3. Social Commerce Apps – Live streaming

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are the top social platforms that participate in the Chinese trend of social commerce but there are also emerging platforms that focus on live-streaming shopping.

(Live streaming is when the streaming video is sent over the Internet in real-time, without first being recorded and stored). Today, TV broadcasts, video game streams, and social media videos can all be live-streamed.

Live-stream shopping is also an effective method because the user has to purchase quickly before the streamer moves onto a different product. In China, this is usually done on a “super-app” such as Taobao, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu.

4. Social Commerce And BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later)

Another great effect of social commerce is the “buy now pay later” service. It is becoming very popular for online shopping platforms to have an alternative payment method that allows a customer to split payments without paying interest.

Budgeting is something very important to Gen Z and Millenials, so this service creates an extra push for online purchasing.

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