What is social commerce & how to use it effectively?

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With the advent of digitalization, e-commerce has over the years flourished and given rise to social commerce. In this blog, we would deal with the meaning of social commerce, the emergence of social commerce & how it can effectively boost online business.

Meaning of social commerce

Social commerce is simply making use of social media platforms to facilitate e-commerce transactions. A person nowadays on average spends about two hours on social media every day. Therefore it becomes easier for the customers to buy products while scrolling through their favorite entertainment apps. Businesses have started using social media platforms to not only advertise products/ services but also enable customers to make instant purchases without having customers leave the social media platforms.

This has been made possible with social media shoppable ads, Facebook marketplace, and Instagram shops which enables a customer to shop online from their preferred sellers' social media handles.

A brief history of social commerce

The word social commerce was coined in the year November 2005 by Yahoo. Shoposhere by Yahoo was the first-ever platform to conceptualize the idea of social commerce. The ‘pick list’ feature in Shoposhere allowed users to review the products & comment on the same. Since then social commerce has emerged as a global activity.

The pandemic has given much significance to the phenomenon of social commerce. User activity and dependence on social media have increased to such an extent that users are more likely to abandon carts if they have to leave the app. In order to turn User engagement into purchases, social commerce emerged as a viable solution which was first tapped into by Facebook in 2007 with shoppable ads. Instagram followed suit and now has become one of the leading customer acquisition strategies in e-commerce.

Benefits of using social commerce tools

Though social commerce seems very easy, to begin with, the story can be quite different sometimes. Not using the resources and the tools effectively might lead you to lose customers instead of gaining them.

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So here are some effective ways to use social commerce.

Social commerce in India is now valued at $1.5 to $2 billion and in a couple of years, it is expected to grow from $16 to $20 billion. It is to have a significant impact on the economy in the upcoming years. Thus large-scale and small-scale businesses can expect a boost in sales and revenue by social commerce. But it requires efficient customer support and Mezchip offers the required customer support platform to grow such business.

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Omnichannel customer support platform for online stores

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Omnichannel customer support platform for online stores