“Social commerce” is one of the biggest buzzwords in conversations I have with startups and investors in Silicon Valley. The reason is simple. Peer group influence on product decision making is one of, if not the single largest factor in driving purchases. Social networks become the glue to see what our friends are buying and to be able to purchase directly things they recommend. This can be a song, album, movie, clothing, gadgets, appliances, and more. Our social networks become a quick and easy way for peer influence to impact our buying habits. However, we are still many important steps away from achieving this reality.
But it seems Twitter has simply given up on the idea entirely. Yesterday, a story broke that Twitter had disbanded their commerce team and ceased work on their Buy button. It is possible Twitter realized their platform (if it is just a news platform) is not the place social commerce will take place. This is probably correct, but the broader idea has potential.
Let’s start with this data point. Globally, 48% of consumers said an easier/quicker checkout process would encourage them to buy online more. When we filter that answer just by active social networkers it goes up to 60%. Now comes Apple Pay. What Amazon showed us was a stored credit card and one click checkout could stimulate online buying. Other features like free shipping and easy online returns rank high among motivation for consumers as well, but easy checkout is prime among them. Something like Apple Pay or Android Pay could dramatically accelerate online shopping across a plethora of categories.
WeChat may also be setting the prime example with 47% of consumers saying they have made a purchase through WeChat using a mobile wallet in the last month. This is the highest monthly mobile wallet transactions of any market we study. WeChat has many of the foundations in place that are still void in major commerce markets like US and UK. Which is why I have hope that, once this foundation is laid, we will see a dramatic acceleration of online transactions.
Mobile wallets are the first step to driving not just more online transactions, but enabling these to easily happen on social networks. Apple Pay and Android Pay are the two most widespread wallet solutions I can see developing this. I certainly won’t give my credit card to Facebook but I’ll trust Apple Pay. If Facebook has a quick way for me to buy a product I’m interested in or a friend promotes by using Apple Pay to make it quick and seamless then I can see social commerce taking off.
Luckily, Facebook seems to acknowledge this and has stated they will support Apple Pay but this will also be up to the merchant to support it on Facebook as well. Perhaps this is an area where Google’s Android Instant Apps come into play.
While Google showed this idea first, I fully anticipate Apple will have something similar. The idea is, you get an app-like experience without having to download the app. For example, a friend posts a link to BuzzFeed on Facebook. You click the link and see the Buzzfeed mobile app UI but you haven’t installed the Buzzfeed app. Similarly, this works for commerce. Below is the screen shot examples Google highlighted to give us an idea of the use cases:
It is by no accident two of those three use cases are commerce experiences. The parking meter one highlights the pain point that many parking meters require you to download their own proprietary app in order to pay remotely. I’ve done this before where you download the app to pay then promptly delete it since you will likely never use it again.
This extends to many areas of the app/web experience and makes a lot of sense both for things like commerce, entertainment, and even app discovery. Given how many app or app commerce ads we see on Facebook, I can see an implementation of Android Instant Apps that is very good for something like Facebook when it comes to social commerce. Google is hoping these will play a role in their mobile search results but my hunch is Facebook, and other social platforms, will be the big winners here.
If at WWDC Apple does show how developers can implement Apple Pay into websites, I think we will start to see momentum pick up here. Like so many other pockets of the industry, Apple’s ecosystem will likely adopt this first and Apple customers will be the primary drivers of social commerce in markets like the US and the UK at the start.
Mobile wallets, and the ubiquity and comfort of using them, is step one to many growth drivers of online commerce. If my timeline is correct, 2017 should see many of these trends start to gain momentum.
for Facebook to create their own version of Instant App they would have to create first their own version of cloud based Google Play service same is also true for Apple
They are more like web applets. So pretty doable. And my Facebook point was that those ads would simply be instant apps. Just a link to the instant app as an ad so can be done without Facebook having to bless it, technically at least.
sure it’s doable but that will still require a Cloud back end, with all these app to enable those services level result.
I appreciate you sharing this blog post. Thanks Again. Cool.
It’s really very complex in this full of activity life
to listen news on Television, thus I simply use the web
for that reason, and obtain the most recent news.
Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids. I found a sea
shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to
her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely
off topic but I had to tell someone!
Howdy, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar
one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam responses?
If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can recommend?
I get so much lately it’s driving me mad so any assistance is very much appreciated.