What's Social Ecommerce, and How Can Your Jewelry Brand Leverage It?

If you run an ecommerce jewelry store, and you’re already taking advantage of social media marketing, then you’re familiar with how social media can help direct new customers to your ecommerce store. But have you ever heard the term “social ecommerce”? In this blog post, we’ll explain what it means and how your jewelry brand can start taking advantage of it.

With social ecommerce, a brand creates a personalized and targeted shopping experience within a social media platform like Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest, so the customer can shop without leaving the social media platform. In addition, social ecommerce can refer to a brand that has incorporated a social experience into its own app or website.

According to this article from Smart Insights, “Many users don’t want to leave a social environment for an external site to complete a search or purchase. There is now an expectation for a more seamless, frictionless buying experience.” As a result, social media platforms have introduced new features to make that buying experience possible: buy buttons within social posts, “shoppable” posts and stories, social media ads that invite the customer to “buy now”, and peer-to-peer buying and selling.

As a jewelry brand, you may already be leveraging social ecommerce without even realizing it. For example, if you’re taking full advantage of Instagram Shopping, then you’re tagging your products in your photos, videos, and stories and then turning those posts into opportunities for Instagram users to shop. Instagram is already taking social ecommerce to a whole new level by offering Instagram Checkout, which allows customers to purchase products within Instagram, without ever having to leave the app and going to the retailer’s website. The Checkout feature is currently in a closed beta in the US only, and you can learn more on this page.

One example of a company using social ecommerce in a unique way is Depop, a peer-to-peer social shopping app based in London. When it first launched, Depop was a platform where users could post photos of their clothes and offer them for sale. Today, it has more than 13 million users, and some successful members even use the platform to support their livelihood.

Instead of relying on third-party social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to create a social shopping experience, Depop has created a social experience within its own app. Depop is fun because users can make new connections by following other users, browsing items from their favorite brands, and even getting recommendations based on their browsing and purchasing history. It’s also extremely easy to use on a mobile device. Anyone who wants to sell on Depop can create an account, post a photo of the item, add a description, and a price.

As a jewelry brand, you may not have the technological resources and bandwidth to create your own social shopping platform, but you can still look to Depop as an example of how consumers are shopping and sharing products today.

The benefits of social ecommerce are numerous, but here are three major ones that you can start seeing today:

Eliminate Steps in the Conversion Funnel: Statistics show that customers are less likely to buy a product with each step they must take in the conversion funnel. For example, if your customer must interrupt social media browsing to visit your website and then add a product to a cart and ultimately enter payment information, the customer will be more prone to abandoning the purchase and leaving your store behind. When you can combine the shopping experience with the social experience, then you’re streamlining the purchase journey.

Respond Quickly to Customer Queries: Customers who are shopping on a social media platform expect to also be able to interact with your jewelry brand in the same way they’d interact with friends on social media – through DMs and comments. They can ask you questions directly, and you have the chance to build personal relationships with them.

Get Your Products Shared: On a social media platform, it’s easy for customers to share and recommend your products to their friends. In addition, customers can easily save your products to purchase later, if they’re not ready to click “buy” in that moment.

For social ecommerce to work effectively, your ecommerce site must absolutely be optimized for mobile shopping, since most people engage in social media activity on their smartphones. In addition, you must be committed to investing money and time into your product and editorial imagery, which will represent your brand on social media. Finally, you’ll want to prioritize building trust with customers and focusing on creating lasting relationships with them.