As a possible indication that more retailers understand the necessity of building a superior e-commerce experience to remain competitive, more than seven out of 10 respondents to the survey said they planned to spend more on advanced e-commerce applications, such as video, blogs and advanced search. Among those advanced applications, by far the largest percentage (49 percent) of respondents said they planned to spend more on social marketing technologies (e.g., ShopTogether).

Perhaps the most recent example of the importance retailers are beginning to place on social marketing comes from Mattel, which just launched MattelShop.com. ShopTogether was one of Mattel’s three strategic pillars to support the company’s first “online shopping destination committed to delivering play everyday by offering a complete selection of Mattel products, informative content, and an immersive social shopping experience.” 

At DecisionStep, we’ve spent almost a decade developing rich e-commerce applications to improve the site experience for consumers, and understand that social marketing is a critical factor to driving engagement and increasing conversions. With social shopping applications, retailers can make their sites a more engaging and fun experience for their shoppers by allowing them to interact with the people who matter most in the decision-making process — friends, family, peers and customer service reps — like they do in the offline world. And brands benefit from better word of mouth and reach by connecting fans to their friend networks on the major social media sites and on the brand’s home site as well.

Pioneering online brands like MattelShop.com, Buy.com and CharlotteRusse.com clearly understand these benefits…and the study cited above shows that a large number of other retailers have also caught on.