All Commerce Is SocialBy Lisa Kindred, founder of New Wave Fashion

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Three Phases of the Purchase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Best Practices for Creating and Driving Social Commerce experiences . . . . . . . . . . 7

Social Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Social Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Table of Contents

All Commerce Is Social

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IntroductionWay back in 1999—a thousand years ago in Internet years—a writer and designer, named Darcy DiNucci,

coined the phrase Web 2.0. This marked the beginning of the web as a social experience, eventually

altering commerce so that today customers can be brand advocates who play a crucial role in building

your business.

You already know that your customers are talking about your brand on social media platforms, posting

images from your product pages to Pinterest, and checking reviews. The brick-and-mortar and virtual

commerce experiences have become so intertwined that customers sometimes make an online purchase

while standing in your store.

Today, these social behaviors are integrated into every aspect of the way we do business and have

become part of the business model. We can break down the purchase interaction in three distinct

phases: pre-purchase, mid-purchase, and post-purchase.

Throughout each step of the purchase cycle, customers are socializing. In our increasingly digital world,

offering ways for our customers to stay connected socially as well as digitally becomes increasingly

important.

Liza Kindred is the founder and CEO

of Third Wave Fashion. A passion-

ate believer in open business, Liza’s

last stint was as managing partner

at a successful web development

and education company, where she

took the company from 2 guys to

a 30 person team with multi-million

dollar revenues. At the age of 22, she

opened her first business, a fashion

forward clothing boutique, which

led into retail buying, fashion show

production, and photo styling.

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Three Phases of the Purchase

Let’s break down the purchase into its three phases.

Pre-PurchaseThe rise of discovery platforms, such as Pinterest, The Fancy, StumbleUpon, Chill (for videos), Trippy (for travelers), and many

more, have cemented the consumer behavior of engaging in social interaction before (sometimes way before) the actual point

of a purchase. This behavior has also been called reverse-showrooming; it has the capacity to drive users from discovery sites

to stores.

Discovery platform The Fancy

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“ Shopping is social, so brands need to be social,” Jess Iandiorio, Acquia’s VP of product marketing, stated in her blog post about the three keys to brand success.

Beauty and makeup tutorial videos on YouTube account for 14.9 billion views. Brands have a long way to go: A paltry 3

percent of these videos are produced by the brands themselves, meaning that 97 percent of this content comes from

customers and fans. YouTube currently has 45,000 beauty channels not run by brands. (Source: Pixability)

Mid-PurchaseWhen searching for rooms on Hotels.com, customers are alerted to how many other people are searching that city or looking

at that same hotel’s page. It creates a sense of urgency and community.

Trending products feeds can show your customers what’s being pinned, posted, shared, and purchased—as it happens.

This real-time user engagement can help morph a website from a static page into an engaging platform for socializing as well

as shopping.

Wonder’s trending products feed

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Post-PurchaseIn many ways, the social aspects of shopping begin in earnest after the point of conversion. many brands now offer shoppers

the ability to share their purchases in real time; seconds after the purchase is made, entire social graphs have been alerted.

Haul videos are a phenomenon that has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years; users upload simple videos of themselves

sharing their latest shopping “haul,” including stores and prices. The customers making these videos are not celebrities or

even experts; one 10-minute haul video has 1.7 million views. It features a young woman sharing what she bought on a

shopping trip and includes her telling the camera that she doesn’t consider herself a stylish person.

There are over 800,000 haul videos on YouTube; they have more combined views than the insanely viral “Gangnam Style”

video and its imitators, which have received 1.8 billion views. It’s difficult to imagine what the cost to brands would be to

produce this amount of content themselves.

offering a different perspective are companies like olapic, which offers a visual commerce platform that aggregates and

curates social content for brands. You know that your customers are out there creating content about your brand; these tools

give you the power to feature and brand that content. Their installment for CoACH, called “#CoACHFromABoVe”, is a great

example; see it live at http://coachfromabove.coach.com/.

Along every step of the purchasing cycle, from discovery and inspiration to uncrating and styling, cross-channel social

interaction is the name of the game.

A still from a user-produced haul video

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Best Practices for Creating and Driving Social Commerce experiences

As the increasingly social nature of the Internet continues to alter the world of commerce, the most recent changes have seen

the consumer take a more active role—a partnership role—in producing and consuming a brand’s content or services.

In the past, user testing held a prominent place in many brands’ product development roadmaps. Today, consumers

essentially are driving product choice and design through real-time interaction with each other and with the brand. In the same

way, consumers are participating as full partners in providing services and products offered by brands.

The new phenomena of social production and social consumption is helping brands explore how they are changing the nature

of commerce and finding new paths to success.

Today, consumers essentially aredriving product choice and design through real-time interaction with each other and with the brand.

Threadless voting page

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Social Production

T-shirt company, Threadless, was one of the first social production websites; started with only a thousand dollars, the

company has grown into a 30 million dollar design powerhouse. They achieved this with little risk: The model revolves around

users uploading designs to be voted on by other users; top designs are put into production. The company doesn’t have to

guess at what their customers want; they just have to listen; they already have a fanbase for each design. Social features are

built in at every level of the site; one search filter allows customers to shop by “Popularity.”

It’s not necessary, however, for a business to be built entirely around the social production model. Small upstate New York-

based supermarket chain, Tops Friendly markets, wanted to promote its new Carry out Café pizzas, so they designed a

contest for its Facebook page. employees submitted their favorite specialty pizza designs, and Facebook fans voted (and

received $1 off coupons for doing so) for the top three, which then went into production.

Customers love to feel that their voices are heard; dipping your toe into social production can be a delightful way to engage your biggest fans while gaining accurate customer feedback.

Rent the Runway

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Social Consumption

We’re in the midst of economic turmoil, and we all share increasing concerns about the environment. These factors combined

with our need for sharing have precipitated the rise of social consumption. Some call this the sharing economy; others have

called it rentership society or non-ownership. Blame it on Netflix.

Using the web, it’s now possible to share ebooks with friends, find a stranger’s couch to sleep on, or borrow a neighbor’s

ladder. This behavior has become integrated into business models as well. Customers can rent textbooks, prom dresses, nail

polish, fine jewelry, tools, and pets.

Special occasion dress rental site, rent the runway (named a “Top 50 Website” by Time magazine in 2010), has turned

sharing clothes into what is estimated to be a 200 million dollar business. Customers search by color, occasion, and date

available and rent the dresses for four to eight days, at a fraction of the price of a new dress. The site offers free second-sizes

and sells dress insurance; it is interesting to note that rent the runway houses the largest dry cleaning facility in America.

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Conclusion

In a volatile economy with a strong culture of sharing, companies are not being intimidated by customers’ changing

demands, building social aspects into every piece of their businesses.

All parts of the selling cycle benefit from some type of social engagement. You’ve already dipped your toes into the waters

of social selling; these examples should give you some inspiration and ideas to help you take things to the next level.

Call us and let’s talk about how we can get your first site up and running—today! 888-922-7842

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