Social Shopping Sites Bring More Opportunity to Small Businesses
by Rebecca Button on March 31st, 2008
Interesting thing isn’t it? How the internet has completely replaced the need to leave your house to buy things. Shopping malls were once the great meccas of consumerism. What a shame….What’s that you say? They still are? Oh….how is that possible? The internet has EVERYTHING and you don’t even have to get off your duff to get it!
Sarcasm aside, in spite of the incredible convenience the internet affords, people are still flocking to malls around the world to find what they are looking for. So why is that? I thought the internet was supposed to make things easier?
The reason for this according to a recent Inc.com article, is that while shopping can be done individually, it is largely a social activity. We rely on recommendations from our friends and family to locate sources for certain products we may be interested in because we trust these people to give us good leads. In the internet world, all we’ve had to rely on are the search results Google and the like produce for us which, as we savvy internet users have come to find out, is based primarily on variables that do not have the consumer in mind, often producing the most prominent (read "well known") sites first.
We’re in luck though. Smart entrepreneurs have recognized this and are doing something about it. For the first time, we are starting to see websites dedicated to tailoring the online shopping experience directly towards the consumer. Sites such as ThisNext , Shoposphere and Kaboodle are what is called "social shopping" sites. And here’s what they do:
- Features recommendations by friends and like-minded shoppers
- Gives authority users based on quality recommendations
- Display a wider array of smaller (and arguably cooler) brands/businesses
As a small business marketer here’s how and why you can use these sites to grow your business:
- It’s zero cost if you do it right. For example, on ThisNext, if you fill out a "Shopcast" including one of your products, it will likely generate interest and click throughs to your website.
- Again, done correctly, you could also end up forming a mini army of volunteer brand evangelists. Word of mouth is still a very valuable marketing tool. The same applies for the internet.
- You will see not only a rise in web traffic but also in sales. Topo Ranch , a t-shirt company, stated that after posting their original Shopcast, their "daily Web traffic has increased by almost a third and sales have risen 165 percent." The numbers don’t lie.
Just remember to be a responsible member of these communities. Many of them self police anyway but you cannot approach it from a strict marketing standpoint. Don’t be intrusive and abuse the system. Merely develop good relationships and allow it to work for you.