Fcommerce (Social Commerce) and What It Can Do for Sales
Social commerce wasn’t something I had taken much notice of or indeed really cared that much about until I heard talk of it being able to increase sales for an ecommerce site. Then I was interested!
Before I started to research the idea I had a notion that this was a totally new type of commerce (which we can add to a list that over the last year has grown to include, Ecommerce, Mcommerce and now Scommerce and Fcommerce). Ok so it’s a long list, but they have all the same end goal, to sell more.
You’ll be glad to know that there is nothing really that new or awe inspiring about any of these new forms of commerce, some are doing it on a smaller screen (mobile commerce or Mcommerce) some allow you to sell through Facebook (Fcommerce) and some use the power of social media to help your sell (Scommerce), but from what I can see there is nothing that will really change the face of online retail forever.
Back to social commerce.
The idea is simple and has been with use for a quite a while now. Facebook is planning to freshen things up a little, but the basic idea will remain the same.
Think of it like this, if you are going to buy the latest new gadget, but you want to know if it’s really any good and worth spending your money one. So how do you find out? Well you might take a look at the reviews on Amazon, you might jump on a forum and post the question and see who responds..
This is social commerce and there is nothing new here, we’ve been doing it for a long time now. However this is social commerce in its most primitive form.
Queue Facebook!
What Facebook plan is to take the basic idea but instead of reading reviews and getting options from complete strangers, you will have the views and opinions of your social group.
Now I’m not a psychiatrist and I haven’t studied human behavior but there are a few things that are clear with this strategy.
Firstly any human wants to feel excepted into their social group, call it peer pressure or the need to be loved. The fact is if your group suggests that you should own this product either because they already have it or because they want to own it themselves. The drive for you to own that product will be greater. The idea doesn’t focus on your needs but instead your wants, you want to feel included in that group you want to own that product because it will help you do that. Also because you know and have interacted with these people before the decision to take their advice is made easier.
So that is what Facebook are planning, the next question is how.
I have to say that it’s a big ask, but they have been laying the foundations for a while now this is also where the concept gets a little harder to understand!
To make this work Facebook need to connect the web together, in a way like Google. Google do it using spiders to index the web, Facebook will use its 500 million members and its range of buttons and widgets. In a way we are the spiders, who are passing what we have found back to Facebook and this is done mostly through their “likes” button.
It’s now hard to find a blog that doesn’t have a Facebook “like” button, and these little widgets are how they are planning to intertwine the web. Every time a Facebook user clicks the Like button, Facebook makes the connection between, us the member, the page we liked and our social groups who may also the pages we have “liked” to be of interest.
Ecommerce is a little behind with adding Facebook widgets, but they will catch up, no one can afford to ignore a potential market of 500 million people. When this happens the same principle will apply. Products that we have liked will be shared amongst our group who may also like the same product.
If Facebook can achieve this goal ecommerce may just find that their reliance on Google to send traffic and drive sales will be lessened. These social connections may also help to drive more sales because in a way we are not just buying a product but also acceptance from our social group.
This is a guest post by Neil Jones who is currently working as head of marketing for eMobileScan, based in the UK and are on course to be one of the leading barcode scanner and handheld computers specialists.
