ARE YOU S-COMM READY?

delivers an end-to-end shopping experience in one place. Consumers can browse catalogues, save products for later, share and immediately buy within the apps or on a brand’s website.

Facebook is constantly evolving its s-commerce with features that create a simple yet interactive digital shopping experience for both the brand and consumers. The justreleased Drops feature connects online shoppers to the brands’ latest products and upcoming releases on the Shop tab in the app. Users can sign up for release notifications, save a Drop to their Instagram profile, share a Drop with friends and directly purchase products that they have ‘dropped’ within the app, using the Checkout feature.

Facebook has also newly released a Live Shopping feature, a more

Snapchat has just recently entered into the s-commerce space with ‘Brand Profiles’. Currently, in beta, brands can create a Brand Hub within the app to connect their Brand AR Lenses, Brand Highlights and Story posts in one place. The Native Store feature included within Brand Hub exposes Snapchatters to a brand’s in-app storefront, where they can browse and purchase within the app.

Set up social store fronts and catalogues within the social platforms of choice. Whether you are driving consumers to your website or to the brand store within the app, you will be able to leverage enriched data from the platforms for use in your shoppable ads or other digital campaigns.

Understand local capabilities of social commerce platforms in your market, as limitations will exist by region. Often, new capabilities and features are piloted in more established markets or where the adoption rate is high.

Identify the right s-commerce platforms for your brand needs. Evaluate integrations with internal platforms, targeting capabilities and audience reach, etc. This will help you develop a tailored retail and marketing plan, inclusive of digital and organic strategy per platform.

When developing your activation plan, it’s important to identify the stage of your brand’s product in the marketing funnel. Based on the objective, different features such as call-to-action and messaging will need to be considered for optimal results.

Ensure the user checkout experience is seamless. Content should be created with the checkout process in mind. The first interaction with the brand should be straightforward and engaging, encouraging shoppers to a clear and swift checkout process.

As you enter the s-commerce space it’s ideal to invest in and test multiple social platforms as it will open up new audiences, capabilities, proprietary optimisation algorithms and more.