The social movement in retail has four stages.  Most retailers are still at stage 1.  A few are demonstrating that they have graduated and are moving towards “frictionless commerce”.  And those that invest now will create unique social experiences with their customers.

Stage 1: Social For The Sake Of Social. The goal here is to try and promote awareness of the brand.  Retailers in this phase (about 60% of those with a social effort underway).  You can find them because they are exceedingly interested in the ROI of the tools they are employing.  They are very tactical and just beginning to understand other metrics and how social impacts their business.

Stage 2: Enlightened Engagement. This includes a social effort with an emphasis on listening to the customer and having dialog with them.  It could be through video, syndicated reviews, real-time communication with experts, etc.

Stage 3: Store of The Community. The community gives input into what products and promotions should look like for the brand or store. For instance, Dell lets customers have input on new features they feel should included in their products.  It could also include merchandising strategy among other shopper insights.  “Companies realize that they can use new technologies - mobile applications, geo-location shopping and social couponing - coupled with emerging social technologies, loyalty programs and point of sale data to redesign the shopping experience,” said Cecere.

Stage 4: Frictionless Commerce. The overall shopping experience is redesigned with a focus on building customer intimacy and an extraordinary experience.  Customers are delighted and will want to share their experience with their friends. Push-based marketing will begin to give way to the momentum of community pull. Friends can buy with friends, new services can be delivered, checkout becomes more automated, and channels become more seamless.  Cecere’s further explained, “this is not just about putting your shopping cart on Facebook, but taking social connections and truly ehance this experience of shopping.  It has always been very transactional and impersonal. Let’s make it personal and better”.

So, the big take away for me is that the majority of retailers are early in the process (stage 1).  Many of them are waiting to see how things work for their competitors or others—but that is exactly the wrong thing to do!  Cecere warned that the problem with socially dipping your toe in the water and waiting for the other guy to figure it out is that it emphasizes the “sea of sameness”.  It means that you aren’t going to differentiate and attract customers.  You will likely implement something similar to your competitor—making it even harder to get your unique message across!

Instead, we should try new technologies and build efforts that you think will support and grow your brand.  And do it FAST. Try, learn, make mistakes.  Be first and learn what works for your company and your brand.

We (at DecisionStep) agree wholeheartedly.  Our best clients are using our collaboration platform, measuring what works, talking with their customers about the experience.  Then they refined the interface, challenged us with additional feature requests and ideas and streamlined the experience.  They are independently leveraging ShopTogether in different ways to connect their consumers to each other and to their companies.  This is the kind of extraordinary experience that will get you noticed and get you out of the “sea of sameness”.

1. Viral Marketing: Retailers need to tap into their customers’ social networks to promote products, find new, like-minded customers and generate traffic or buzz around the brand. There are many companies working in this area, with many creative agencies developing smart, integrated campaigns leveraging Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and the like, while generating new “fans” for brands to reach.
2. Affirmation: Ratings and reviews initially served to give consumers more confidence in a product’s reliability, worthiness or “cool” factor. But until recently, these have mostly been from anonymous reviewers or people unknown by the purchaser. Now though, buyers can get this affirmation directly from the people who matter most in the purchase decision, namely friends, family and peers.  The Facebook “Like” button and commenting/feedback via social networks are examples.
3. Collaboration: Consumers can work together in real time to choose a car, furniture or an outfit.   Also, some companies are promoting group purchasing and/or steep discounts if large numbers of consumers buy within a certain timeframe.  This area stands out because it can lead directly to a purchase. ShopTogether, Groupon are specific examples of collaboration solutions.

Retailers need to address all three of these areas in their social strategy.  ShopTogether’s flexible interface and turn-key products can help retailers address each one of these aspects to create a complete and effective social commerce solution. We would love to hear how you’re viewing the space.

DecisionStep’s ShopTogether application is included as an example in the co-browsing/co-shopping category. Forrester finds that 35 percent of retailers are looking to add this functionality in 2010, and calls it out as “… extremely valuable because it can reduce abandonment by confused or frustrated shoppers,” and  that “…applications of this tool to high-value verticals such as appliances or auto could be promising.” Also, “If executed well, this has the ability to drive increased conversion and reduced cart abandonment.”

Also evaluated, product sharing was called out as “one of the most promising social commerce technologies …While the value of social network pages themselves remains questionable, peer-to-peer (P2P) product sharing appears to be more promising. It is currently deployed or was planned for implementation/enhancement in 2009 by 53% of retailers surveyed…Several retailers already report that this functionality has driven more traffic to their site than virtually all other interactive marketing tactics (other than paid search).”

Product sharing can easily be coupled with a collaborative shopping experience in real-time when the users are online together.  You can create an environment of not only sharing, but one that has a friendly and high-functioning experience where a second opinion from a trusted friend comes effortlessly.

As for social recommendations, Forrester found that this technology is “currently employed or was planned for implementation/enhancement in 2009 by 59% of Web retailers.”  Given the mass appeal, choose to implement in a way that keeps your customers engaged with your products and brand—and let them bring their friends into the store too.

It is important that companies optimize their brand in response to this shift. Brian Solis, a prominent author and thought leader in the area of new media, recently published a list of 10 steps for optimizing the brand for social search (below).

For brands in the retail, real estate, financial services, travel and other markets, our ShopTogether application for social commerce can help brands tackle six of the steps (Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and the “Bonus” below) that Solis recommends, plus a lot more.

The ShopTogether toolbar modernizes a site by integrating sharing and chat functionality found on the most innovative places on the Web, and allows one-click distribution of a brand’s content to all of the social networks most important to its customers. On top of that, ShopTogether allows real-time interaction on the site itself, keeping friends and other site visitors connected on the page, where they can chat and browse each other’s products, giving them a voice and letting them share opinions that lead to buying decisions.

In addition, data collected anonymously by the ShopTogether Crowd application can be used for broadcasting the hottest items in the store in real-time, displaying those products dynamically on the site itself, or on the company’s Facebook fan page or in banner ads on third party sites, adding a new merchandising element for brands.

Which of the below steps has your company taken to optimize your brand for the way consumers are now getting information? Contact us and let us know.

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/03/optimizing-brands-for-social-search/

10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search

1. Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010

2. Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search

3. Create meaningful and personable social profiles where consumers are active today (pay attention to where they will be tomorrow as well)

4. Establish an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for each and every network with cadence

5. Add social connectivity to the home site to facilitate maximum engagement (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google, Yahoo) – eradicate proprietary login systems

6. Integrate social sharing functionality at the source of engagement – keep them on the page

7. Enable the social syndication of that content within one step

8. Manually introduce content and social objects to stakeholders and social beacons

9. Create paths that define and engender the experience you desire with destinations and calls to action integrated to close the loop

10. Monitor the activity and find ways to improve the experience and also sharing

Bonus: Give them a voice to make sharing more personal and contextual

According to the study, respondents said that they are currently spending 5.6 percent of marketing budgets on social. That number will rise to nearly 10 percent in the next 12 months and to nearly 18 percent in the next five years. These numbers reflect similar data that recently came out from the Society of Digital Agencies, and points to the growing importance of social media as part of the overall media mix.

It would be interesting to see how these numbers break down even further, for example, how much is going towards marketing  third party sites or networks vis-à-vis expanding the use of social tools on their own sites. Most of the companies we talk to are testing a variety of approaches. How are your budgets being allocated? Contact us and let us know.

Although design differs, many real estate and rental sites are strikingly similar in terms of functionality and usability.

Real-time collaboration technologies like ShopTogether can provide an immediate point of differentiation for real estate sites.  It’s a technology that has already seen success among early adopters in the retail segment; however, we think it could help connect agents, spouses and roommates online for a more productive home “search.”

For leaders in online real estate, early adoption of these collaboration tools can help further outpace competitors. For companies jockeying for the number 2, 3 or 4 positions in a crowded market, collaboration technologies like ShopTogether can be just the thing to help spread the word, build brand and catapult a company to No. 1.

Additionally, 68 percent of home buyers are couples (either married or unmarried), and 87 percent work with an agent. What that implies is that an overwhelming majority of home buyers works with at least one, and in most cases, two other people throughout the decision-making process.

In spite of this inherently “social” nature of home buying, the online experience for the real estate industry is a highly isolated and solitary one, e.g.:  An agent emails pages of links and options from an MLS that may or may not fit the buyer(s)’ criteria; the buyer looks through the links on her own and eliminates the ones she knows off the bat don’t fit.  Then she goes through the site doing some research on her own, copies the links and adds them to the list.  Next, maybe she forwards the links from work to her fiancé, who then repeats the process. Once the couple has decided on their list, they may send it back to the agent, who then has recommendations on certain listings she knows have inherent flaws the buyer might not know about and finally they arrive on a set of possibilities.  Then, it’s time to start pounding the pavement.

Social commerce tools like ShopTogether minimize those hassles by allowing two or more people to view properties online together from different locations.  A couple can browse properties together in real-time from across town during their lunch breaks.  They can even have their REALTOR join in to guide them and answer questions, and couples can give a quick “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” on a listing.  And for rental sites, ShopTogether can provide similar benefits for friends or couples researching a place that will appeal to everyone in the group.

Given we’re still in the early stages of social commerce, ShopTogether can be a differentiator on innovative sites that will attract more visitors and keep them there longer, which benefits not only end-users, but also the sites that depend on ad revenue as part of their business model.

With the explosion in popularity of sites like Facebook and Twitter, the real-time social potential of the web is finally starting to be realized, and the sooner real estate sites embrace this trend themselves, the sooner they’ll be exclaiming, “Sold!”

JCPenney: The department store is offering free shipping and screenbusters which highlight high-quality gifts at sharp price points. The retailer also announced it will offer its Cyber Monday promotions a day earlier this year on Sunday, November 29. The two-day online sale will feature special offers exclusive to jcp.com on more than 30,000 items.

Blue Nile: The jewelry retailer will offer free overnight shipping on all orders placed on Monday, November 30 and premiere holiday exclusives at midnight including limited edition jewelry items that will be offered at a significant discount and only available for 24 hours or while supplies last.

Walmart: The big box retailer is offering free shipping for home, electronics and baby items as well as 80 percent off select clearance orders. The retailer also is offering major discounts on popular gift items including Guitar Hero, Nintendo and the Garmin GPS.

Undoubtedly the lure of 80 percent off and free shipping is tough to resist, and disseminating the news about these deals through both traditional and new media campaigns is a key component of retailers’ strategy to get customers into their virtual “doors.” 

But once customers go online on Monday, it’s important they stay in the store, shop, and buy…and keep coming back.

Customer reviews, blogs and online video have gone a long way in connecting brands to their fans and improving their online experience. But pioneering brands like Mattel, Charlotte Russe and more are taking it to the next level this holiday season using social shopping tools like ShopTogether.

When a shopper sees a new toy they think would be perfect for their nephew, or a pair of flats that would look great on their best friend, ShopTogether can move that person from the spark of inspiration to action, by letting them chat and browse products, in real-time, with someone that can give their instant “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on the purchase, or recommend alternatives.

The purchase process, which, without ShopTogether, otherwise may be a time-consuming hassle, can now be a fun way to reach a decision while introducing the brand to new customers.  Whereas deals and promotions will likely drive millions of customers online on Cyber Monday, social commerce tools like ShopTogether will go a long way to ensuring those customers come back on Tuesday, Wednesday and into 2010.

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.