Why your organization should leverage social commerce

More and more eCommerce brands are starting to sell their products on social media platforms, and there’s no place with more potential customers than on social media. Over the next three years, sales through social networks such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram will grow three times faster than sales through traditional shopping methods.

Organizations should consider optimizing their social channels for commerce for a higher chance of increasing revenue. Not doing so leaves money on the table and a missed opportunity to delight your customers. We'll discuss and present test templates for how you can optimize your social commerce strategy with real feedback from potential customers.

Why focus on social commerce?

Social media platforms are emerging sales channels that drive product discovery and transactions—enabling shoppers to purchase at the moment of inspiration. Social commerce sales are predicted to value at $605 billion by 2027. Moreover, 91% of executives anticipate their organization’s social media marketing budget will increase over the next three years, and the majority expect it will increase by more than 50%. 

Social commerce provides instant feedback

With all your followers and buyers on one app, they can instantly tell you what they like or dislike about a product. Previous shoppers can comment reviews about their purchases, which is helpful to both you and the customer as you’ll receive direct feedback, and potential customers can make an informed decision about a product. You can connect with your customers via the comment section or direct messages where you can offer them a great customer experience. 

Shortens the customer journey

In traditional shopping methods, customers view an advertisement, find the product, think about buying it, and then purchase the product which heightens the risk of abandonment due to the amount of time spent contemplating. However, social commerce puts all the steps to the customer journey in one location. The path to purchase is shorter, generating a higher shot at increasing sales. 

Depending on where you are in your social commerce strategy, your organization can understand your customer's evolving expectations, expand commerce to your social channels, and/or optimize your current experience. From overall CX to testing messaging and content, there’s always room to build more personalized experiences for your customers—especially on social media.

Leverage a UserTesting test template to elevate your social commerce strategy

To many, getting feedback from potential customers sounds like a lot of work. Something expensive. Time-consuming. Reserved for bigger initiatives than social media. However, it doesn’t have to be any of those things.

At UserTesting, we understand the importance of understanding how new technologies, trends, and market conditions impact customer behaviors. And social commerce is no different. That’s why we’ve developed test plan templates that focus on social commerce and enable you to collect fast, opt-in feedback in the form of video recordings.

Our pre-built test templates for social commerce are designed by research experts and can be customized to fit your exact testing requirements. As part of this launch, we have templates that help you:

• Understand the customer’s experience as they move from a social media post to an e-commerce website
• Engage more authentically using feedback from customers to improve your social media posts, stories, and video content
• Optimize digital channels for e-commerce (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp)
• Troubleshoot conversion pain points

If you don’t have access to the UserTesting Platform, you can view our template gallery or jump straight to our social commerce template.