What is social commerce and how do the numbers stack up?

Social commerce is a concept to denote user-generated advertorial content on e-commerce sites that enables shoppers “to get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them”. The social networks that spread this advice have been found to increase customer trust in one retailer over another.

Social commerce uses a range of social media tools to create content used in the context of e-commerce. Examples of social commerce include customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and referrals, forums and communities. Technologies such as Augmented Reality have also been used with social commerce to enable shoppers to visualise items of clothing on themselves and solicit feedback through social media tools.

Using customer recommendations collected from trusted social networks has proved to be hugely successful for e-commerce retailers. Take a look at this infographic that shows how the stats stack up!

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