What Does „Social“ in the Context of „Commerce“ Mean To Me ?

When we speak of social commerce, most of us think of selling things on social media. TikTokShops comes to mind. That is usually the extent of thought given. Perhaps we even associate something more negative with it – a new age of mass consumption, cheap stuff to be worn or used once, bought just for a fleeting thrill.

To me, this could not be further from the truth. Hear me out.

Social in the context of commerce means significantly more. It means enjoyment and experience. It means community and belonging. It means thoughtful consumption and less returns.

How so?

1. Social Means Interactive Experiences

The e-Commerce experience revolution is upon us.

20 years ago, when I began my career in retail as a Trainee at a large retail group there was a lot of talk about physical retail having to become a destination for discovery and entertainment. An experience. Especially for those battling it out on the main / high streets, “just selling stuff” was not going to cut it anymore.

Customer Experience Design jobs were created. Stores re-imagined. Stores as community centres. Stores that weren’t a “point-of-sale” but a “point-of-experience”. And, hey: those that pulled it off, survived and thrived.

In a similar vein, the first wave of e-commerce was all about convenience. You only went to buy something online because it was more convenient or cheap. You went online because you needed something. You entered your search term into Google, or perhaps went straight to Amazon or something comparable, browsed through the options, picked one, and, if the experience wasn’t too grueling, bought it.

In the last years, fueled even more by COVID, our digital “main streets” became completely overloaded. Everyone is battling it out over Google rankings, to be one of the first hits when certain terms are searched for. Customer Acquisition Costs, as a result, are exploding. Online shops streamlined and squeezed for every drop of efficiency.

That, alas, brings us to the same point in our digital commerce journey as we were with our physical store experiences 20 years ago.

Today, there is not really a distinct state of “being online” or “going online” to look for something etc. We are equally as online as we are offline. All the time. It’s all one.

As a result, we dip in and out of social circles between the real world and the digital world, too. Our meaningful social interactions, the communities we belong to, are happening everywhere.

It follows that our desire for entertainment, for discovery, for inspiration shift to the digital space, too. We want better experiences. Better experiences together.

Now retail is faced with the same challenge: how to design a fabulous experience online? How to create a journey that is designed around group discovery, not the fulfillment of a specific need? How to do this fast enough to stay relevant?

Indeed, as was the case with physical retail, now digital retail faces an existential crisis if it can’t deliver on the interactive experience needs of its community fast.

2. Social Means Community and a Sense of Belonging

While retail was busy getting its products online and perhaps investing into content for better engagement, Social Media was building communities. Communities retailers could then tap into for money.

Social Media is also becoming the #1 go-to for entertainment and social interaction. Have you looked at your usage statistics lately? We participate in live events and share our thoughts on a group chat, we become one group experiencing something together, we share a moment. We share things that make us laugh or smile or think with friends, we send them little motivation boosters, memes that let them know we’re thinking of them. A thousand little digital moments of friendship, of belonging, of community.

We also find people we trust to guide us. They give us ideas on how to cook, fun things to do, new styles to try out, tips on how to fix something, build something...

How can a brand become part of that same fabric? Create the same kind of moments for me? Give me the same kind of space to explore among like-minded people? Become an intrinsic part of or even driver of a community?

In the same way that measuring customer satisfaction and NPS was the North Star metric of the experience revolution, community metrics should be the indicators of a brand’s likely future success.

As a brand or retailer, please go and measure whether you give your community (please don’t just keep talking about customers, that’s clearly just a 1-directional transaction) a sense of belonging. A space to exchange, to have fun. To become a part of something.

3. Social Means Thoughtful Consumption

As a brand or retailer that has built an engaged community, you have a responsibility. You should guide your community to thoughtful consumption. What do I mean and how can you do that? The key, in fact, is social commerce.

I will never forget my first big-paper interview (for the Guardian) after having Co-founded LiSA with my partner. I believe it was in 2020. It was via phone and I was very nervous. As life happens, I was standing on a parking lot outside a Café where we were sitting with the family after a funeral.

After some general talk about why we founded the business etc. the reporter asked me how it made me feel to have founded something designed specifically to fuel mass consumption. I think my heart stopped for a second. Not, because she had asked that. But because she seemed to really believe that.

Luckily, I had the perfect answer.

Before founding LiSA, my partner and I attempted to build a D2C online business for kids fashion. We made a lot of mistakes and were not successful. However, we experimented like crazy with all the ways in which we believed the future of digital shopping would look. Among those, live shopping. I would literally sell rompers and bibs to my clients across the world trough face time and what later became MVP #1 of LiSA’s live shopping solution. We soon learned we were on to something.

Firstly, there was instant trust. Online clients would book virtual shopping sessions. We hosted them from the store. They would see me, the store – build an instant rapport. I would curate outfits for them and show them live. Our average order values were up to 4X those of our online shop. And the return rates below 10%.

We also started to see the same results with the brands that used LiSA to power their live shopping on site. So, in fact – as I told the reporter – live shopping is a particularly social and sustainable way to shop. It leads to better purchase decisions as people can see the product in action, learn about it from experts, and get validation from their peer group. This leads to a higher satisfaction and thus lower return rates.

Thus, “social” in the context of commerce doesn’t just mean philanthropy. It means better business, too.

So, the next time you get asked about social commerce, you can say:

It’s not only an effective way to engage audiences through fabulous experiences - it’s also a true community builder and helps people make better purchase decisions, which fuels more thoughtful consumption and thus lower returns.