Jim Stoneham is CEO of Payvment, developer of the top Facebook ecommerce platform for brands, agencies, and merchants. Follow the company @Payvment.
The traditional ecommerce experience normally entails searching on Google or Amazon for the product you want, and then scanning for the cheapest deal. Or maybe it means visiting a retailer’s website and trolling through 575 pairs of shoes to find something that suits your style. But rarely does buying online feel like the enjoyable real-world experience of “going shopping.”
By contrast, meeting up at the mall or wandering a busy shopping district with a friend is an inherently social experience. You never know what cool stuff you’ll stumble across, and those moments are what make going shopping so much fun. These fun aspects are actually transferable to the online world. Here are the five to focus on.
1. Let People Emote 讓消費者有感覺
Retail therapy is all about discovering products that get us excited and provoke reactions and conversation with our friends. While many brands have added “want” buttons to product listings, several months of data generally show that a “want” post performs poorly at driving follow-up reactions in the social stream. This is likely because “wanting” something is typically tied to a more considered purchase process.
The key is to enable people to emote the same way they do during the physical shopping experience, and let them share their reactions with others quickly and easily.
關鍵是讓人們可以網購的同時，也能擁有如同逛街般的快樂，網站設計應讓消費者可立即和他們社群的好友分享網購經驗，且過程不能太過複雜。
For example, providing tools to emote is at the core of The Huffington Post’s social features. Next to most articles you can click on buttons that say “amazing”, or “weird”, or “important”. This range drives a more interesting social post and follow-up comments.
像是提供"太神奇了"、"怪怪的"或是"重點中的重點"等，將會使網站吸引更多有趣的留言已即回應。
2. Showcase What’s Hot 展示時下最夯物件
If you make it easy for people to express their views on products, you’ll also know what’s “hot” in your inventory and can give these products more prominence within your shopping experience. By featuring these trending items, you drive impulse purchases by even casual visitors. This creates a self-reinforcing viral loop, which can give products broad exposure to new potential customers.
讓網友自由表達她們對商品的看法，你也就會知道你手上的商品目錄內有哪幾項是流行夯件，然後在網站上特別凸顯這些物件，這樣一來，就能引誘出更多"衝動購買"行為，哪怕只是不小心瀏覽到你網站的訪客
For example, social curation site Wanelo showcases products from across the web that are “saved” the most by its users. More “saves” by users give a product a higher placement on the home page, letting people know what’s hot among Wanelo users.
3. Ditch the Cart 停止使用購物車
Pushing a cart around is a drag in the real world and online. Since social commerce product discovery often comes from within a social stream, it is all about spontaneous, one-off buys, not shopping from a pre-defined list. Enable your shoppers to immediately buy with one click rather than filling up a cart they have to manage and can more easily abandon.
推著購物車逛街無論對"街"友或"網"友來說都是一項負擔。網購通常都來自於因應潮流下的無意識行為，或原訂計畫外、僅只一次性的脫鉤行為，所以請確保網友在購物時能夠在按下滑鼠鍵時，就完成全部的購買步驟。
It’s all about taking friction out of the system so impulses can result in instant sales. The iTunes store has shown the clear value of this one-click, cart-free approach.
4. Lead with Mobile 結合行動裝置
Social discovery is driven from the social stream, and that stream is increasingly being consumed on mobile devices. As of a few months ago, people spend more time using Facebook on their mobile devices than on their PCs, and Twitter users spend six times more time using Twitter mobile than Twitter.com.
This has major implications for the shopping experience. Mobile behavior is a lot different from desktop behavior. With mobile, people prefer snippets of browsing versus longer periods of time when they sit in front of a screen. Make sure your mobile ecommerce experience is bite-sized enough to make spontaneous discovery fun and easy.
在使用行動裝置的時候，消費者比較能夠喜歡到看較"支離破碎"的資訊，也就是說，在同一頁面上只需提供網友可一次性吸收的資訊量，從中提供他們有趣的購物經驗並激發他們的購買欲望。
Social commerce vendors can take a page from Amazon’s mobile shopping flow, which is a great example of this approach in action. The mobile web experience and the mobile app offer simpler versions of the full site that enable shoppers to easily get in and get out.
5. Use Data to Fuel Discovery 善用資料讓網站更吸睛
The online ad industry long ago mastered the art of behavioral targeting: using data about what people do online to infer what their interests are and serve them more relevant ads.
The same thing is now possible with social commerce as people share opinions about your products. The more people interact, the more information you’ll have about what they, and people like them, are interested in. Use this data to put the right products in front of the right people to boost discovery and sales. It’s important to note that this interest or taste-based clustering and targeting reaches beyond the social graph and can be much more effective at driving results. It also makes the shopping experience less of a chore and more fun, since only the products you really like are served up to you.
