Social Media Meets Ecommerce = Social Commerce

February 17, 2009 By BJ Cook,

So today I decided that our #DOSTREAM Twitter integration on our homepage had a good use for not only keeping people up-to-date with information about what we're up to around Digital Operative, but also for ecommerce websites. Think about the shopping experience now; most people read reviews and research products before purchasing. According to the etailing group's 11th Annual Merchant Survey, "user-generated content plays a greater role for consumers with 58% of the EG100 incorporating this tactic into their shopping experience and 24% selling by top-rated products." I thought that's great to be able to base my purchase on the insight of others, but what about in real-time? Was there a way to leverage the swell of chatter over Twitter to bring browsers what I called THE BUZZ? Heck yea. I took a product page from Toys R Us and mocked up a simple solution to tapping the swell of conversations around products for Club Penguin. Think of it as Social Media meets Ecommerce. Here is what I came up with in a matter of minutes:

Twitter Integration Potentials:

Pull in feed around product keywords.
Display your own Twitter badge to create a way to follow.
Create Tweet this link to post product shopping experiences to Twitter network.
For people afraid of losing browsers to links within tweets, deactivate links.
Create a promo hashtag, seed into Twitter network and pull buzz based on that tag.

Obviously this approach takes quite the dive in with both feet mentality, but I'm interested to hear what other ways you think Social Commerce can be introduced for other brands.