1. Social is a paradigm shift

Thanks to the emergence of digital media channels, the way people shop is fundamentally and irreversibly different from a few years ago. We’ve moved on from brand-controlled messages to a world of empowered consumers in a channel-agnostic marketplace.

This brings with it new rules and metrics for acquiring, retaining and interacting with customers.

The power of selling has been with the seller because of the broadcast model and advertising culture. Over the last few years, technology has changed. The customer is now exercising this power.

Search is still a critical mechanism for the web, but time spent on search is up just 1%, compared to a 50% increase in time spent on social networks.”

To take advantage of this, brands must ensure there is a consistent customer experience across online, instore and mobile channels, and social must be a part of every aspect of the business.

2. Social data reveals the why behind the buy

Opinions from friends are still the most trusted source for purchasing decisions – 90% of consumers now trust peer recommendations compared to 14% that rely on advertising.

With the growth of social, consumer conversations are now available online giving businesses access to new data and an opportunity to align more closely to the needs of customers.

Listening to people in social media is fantastic because the comment is made at the moment of high engagement. What you learn through this kind of medium cannot be gathered through research.”

Understanding trends in consumer data allows businesses to become more customer-centric, which is proven to drive sales, decrease returns and support costs, inspire product innovation, and power effective marketing.

3. Becoming customer-centric demands cultural and organisational transformation

Social media brings companies closer to their customers; the real people who shop for, buy, and use their products and services.

The shift in power from broadcast to fragmented media, from brand to consumer, from paid media to earned media, collectively requires a new focus for businesses: an obsessive devotion to understanding and delighting customers.

This calls for an organisation-wide cultural shift at every level.

See the full report by Bazaarvoice

Below is a mini-interview I conducted with Kimberley Williamson, Social Media Strategist with Goldstein Communications. If you have an interesting job and would like to be interviewed, drop me a line.

PB: What does a Digital Strategist do?

KW: In my role as a Digital Strategist I am responsible for balancing many aspects of a digital initiative on behalf of a client. I like to think of my projects as requiring three media arms to operate effectively and a good digital strategist can take these arms and figure out how best to use them and how they should work together.

These are:

1: Paid Media (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Banner Ads, using services such as Retargeter, Etc)

2: Marketed Media (Curation of content across social spaces including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)

3: Earned Media (Placements and awareness brought about by blogger outreach, content syndication etc.)

PB: What do you like most about your job?

KW: My favorite aspect of my job has to be measurement and reporting. The biggest strength of working with online properties is that everything is trackable and provable. Using things such as impressions, interactions or conversion rates, we can gauge the success of an initiative with an accuracy never before achievable. I love gathering all of these things and presenting them in a format that proves what I’ve done was valuable.

PB: What are the biggest things on the digital strategy horizon that you’re interested in?

KW: Looking forward, I will be paying particular attention to the following things:

I believe that mobile technologies such as apps and mobile sites will become integral parts of any business (especially retailers). I feel that American consumers have some catching up to do in terms of mobile purchasing and that the next coolest thing will involve a monetary transaction solution for consumers and their fancy devices.

I don’t think that the next big thing will be a new platform. I think that smart brands will keep their eyes on new applications of platforms that are already established. Foursquare, in particular, is very encouraging of others building on their API and a lot of fun products have been the result of this.

The days of brands reaping the benefits of being early adopters are long gone. The online community at large is used-to and comfortable with interacting with brands in a digital space and they have high expectations for how established brands should be performing. It’s exciting to see how these brands are pushing the boundary of connectedness and interactivity to take creative ideas to their limits in order to stir up some buzz.

See Kimberley’s LinkedIn profile at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberleywilliamson

Cabela’s added several UX features in the past few months. The main enhancements we found in the “Summer 2011 Retailer UX Audit” were the addition of Facebook Like, product videos, and more product views (illustrated in the image below). The Facebook Like is a simple addition that every retailer should add to their product pages. It simply lets customers tell their Facebook friends that they like a particular product, and links back to the product page. It also establishes a link between the person who likes the product, and the retailer.

The other major features, videos and more product views, help Cabela’s customers get a better feel for the products they are interested in. The videos talk about features of the product and show them in usage situations, which anchors the attention of customers in the product more significantly, and gives them more confidence that if they purchase the product, they will not be surprised to find that it doesn’t meet their expectations.

These added UX features are a big step forward for the Cabelas.com user experience. Based on our review of 100 top retailers, some UX features that Cabela’s should consider adding in future releases are: Shopping Lists (different from wish list), Expert Advice/Chat, Product Combinations, Price Drop Alert, and Spanish Product Pages.

Every retailer who doesn’t currently have a Facebook Like and Send button should follow the Toys R Us example (shown below). In the UX Audit that Usography conducted in Q1 of 2011, Toys R Us didn’t have Facebook Like or Send. Then in the Q2 audit, both buttons were slipped very neatly next to the product image, just below the title for high prominence.

These buttons take relatively little effort to incorporate, but add significant social commerce functionality to the catalog. Now customers can Like a toy, which will appear in their friends news feeds, and will also create a link between the company and the customer’s Facebook account. The Send button is a flexible share button, that lets the customer select which of their Facebook friends to send the product detail page link to. The screen captures below show the before (Q1) and after (Q2) images from the respective UX Audits.

Without Facebook buttons:

Toys R Us without the Facebook buttons (Q1 UX Audit)

With Facebook buttons:

Toys R Us with the Facebook buttons (Q2 UX Audit)

In the past few months, Walmart has added user experience features like: Facebook Like, Social Media Sharing, Customer Images of Products, and Order Online/Pickup in Store. (UX scores for all 100 retailers at: http://ht.ly/5Nx4i).

Not every retailer can do Order Online/Pickup in Store, because of logistics, but social sharing and Facebook Like are low hanging fruit. I’m surprised at the number of retailers we reviewed for the Summer 2011 Retailer UX Audit that didn’t have these basic, simple, social commerce features.

Facebook Like, Social Sharing, Email to Friend all added

Pickup in Store Option

Customer's Image of Product

In Usography’s Q2 UX Audit of 100 top retailers, we’re finding that the tools companies offer on product pages have evolved since last quarter. I’m going to write more about this, but I just wanted to show PCMall’s nice orderly product page tool bar.

All the non-purchase actions you might want to take in one easy-to-find area, rather than scattered helter-skelter about the page. I also like the fact that they offer expert chat, for customers who need just a little more info to push them over the edge. But I don’t like the way the floating chat request window covers the product image.

I’ll be publishing a lot more findings about the Summer 2011 UX Audit. There are some advances in surprising corners of the digital commerce world.

Shop.org, comScore, and Social Shopping Labs have recently published their 2011 Social Commerce Study: Consumer Shopping via Social Media. The top line summary is reproduced below. Clearly, social shopping has not yet hit its stride, although the adoption curve is trending in that direction. The report recommends actions retailers can take to bring their social strategy in line with consumer expectations. In Usography’s field studies, we have observed and can confirm comScore’s assertion that mobile is a multiplier of social, not a separate channel.

1) The U.S. online shopper has gone social. Our study focused on the adult online population of the U.S. The study identified that 77% of the online adult population has adopted social platforms. Clearly the critical U.S. consumer for ecommerce is already social.

2) Consumers are ready and willing to shop “socially”. 42% of consumers have “followed” a

retailer proactively. This means that they have sought out the Facebook, Twitter or retailer blog

for a given retailer and opted-in to be contacted by that retailer via social channels. While the

overarching purpose of social media will remain to connect with friends, this shows that

consumers are also actively welcoming brands that they know and trust into a new level of

contact and dialog.

3) Consumers are following multiple retailers but this behavior is still in early stages. The

average consumer that has “followed a retailer” now follows an average of 6.3 retailers.

Consumers are liking and following retailers with – for now – low opt-out rates. The opportunity

for retailers is to build their fan base now and focus on genuine connection and interaction to

maintain that relationship long term.

4) Consumers want product discounts and deals but are also interested in product information. Retailers should consider a “VIP” execution whereby the proven tools of promotion and product information are given a unique and valuable spin for the retailer’s social fans.

5) Over half of consumers who follow a retailer say they have clicked through from a social platform to a retailer’s website, browsed products or commented. Retailers should take this established interaction as a strong indicator of intent.

6) Retailers must project their product stories on Facebook and Twitter without delay. Nearly one third of consumers who follow a retailer also indicate that they have made a purchase through a link they saw on a social platform. Also, when asked about their future intent, over one third of all consumers on a social platform said they would shop directly through Facebook if they were provided the capability.

7) Mobile is both an accelerator and a transformer of social commerce behavior. Mobile is a driver of social frequency: as smartphone usage grows, consumers increase the frequency with which they use social media, including shopping tools such as customer reviews. As retailers expand their mobile strategies, they must also consider how Facebook and Twitter interaction can be built in.

Channels are increasingly blurred to the consumer. Almost half of all consumers report accessing customer reviews using a mobile phone while in-store, a trend that will accelerate as more consumers migrate to smartphones. As women catch up to men in adopting smartphones, this trend will accelerate even more.

9) Consumers are not engaging with retailer blogs. Only 4% of consumers surveyed stated that they followed retailer blogs. With the exception of larger brands and lifestyle brands, retailer blogs have very low usage by consumers and may be better suited to goals other than community. Each brand must make its own call whether to develop a community on its site (blog, etc.) or to drive community using Facebook or other tools.

10) Consumers want access to what their friends think about products on the retailer’s site.

Retailers should consider Facebook Graph API tools as a way to bring the friends along.

More details at: http://ht.ly/5I2Yk

Most retailers are familiar with Facebook’s e-commerce offerings. But there are continually new developments, so Mashable’s primer on F-commerce is a welcome summary of the current state. They quote JWT’s statistic that 48% of millennials (aged 20-33) would like to see the places where they shop give them the ability to buy directly on Facebook, which is enough to motivate even the most conservative e-retailer to push its social commerce offering to the forefront of new initiatives. On the flip side, they quote the JWT statistic that 75% of people are worried about Facebook privacy and security.

I summarized the 4 types of F-commerce below, and there’s a link at the bottom to the original article.

1. Facebook-Facilitated On-Site Selling

Brands can bring the Facebook experience to their websites, tapping users’ connections and interests to support the purchasing process. The simplest examples involve using social plugins — short code snippets that ping Facebook’s network for information about the user visiting the brand’s site. The Like Button is the most common plugin and is usually regarded as a content sharing device, but when it is used in conjunction with a product page it can provide peer support by displaying the names and profile images of people who have Liked the product.

2. Facebook-Initiated Selling

Business accounts can set up a storefront for free on their Facebook Pages, and many thousands have already done so. The vast majority start the shopping process at Facebook.com but then jump to their own ecommerce pages at some point.

3. Complete Selling through Facebook

1-800-Flowers has pioneered a selling process that never takes the user away from Facebook.com. Shoppers can select products, options, see delivery dates and even include a personal message without interrupting their Facebook experience.

4. iFrames vs. Facebook Apps:

There are two ways of displaying F-commerce Pages on Facebook.com, each with its pluses and minuses. In February 2011, Facebook adopted iFrames as the method that businesses use to supply custom content to their Pages. In the simplest terms, iFrames allow a business to create and host its own content and to display it in the 520-pixel middle column of a Facebook Page.

See the Mashable article at: http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/facebook-commerce-guide/