How to Build a Social E-commerce App?

The space of digital commerce keeps advancing with new paradigm shifts. One of the recent trends in e-Commerce is the wildly rising popularity of social commerce platforms. If we really think about it, it is not surprising that the advent of social commerce is causing a big paradigm shift in digital commerce and every business wants to be a part of it. This is because social commerce essentially uses the core principles of digital commerce and takes it to the next level.

The conversion funnel is full of tedious and unnecessary steps for most purchase journeys. Social commerce is all about eliminating unnecessary steps from the buying journey, decreasing the time from each step, and enhance engagement along the way. Put simply, using social media to sell products directly is known as social commerce. Features like chatbot checkouts, autofill for payment and delivery details, direct buying from Livestream, etc., make social commerce far more streamlined than traditional eCommerce.

Features of a Successful Social E-Commerce App

Building a successful social E-Commerce app would require you to include features that make the buying journey shorter, faster, and smoother. Here are some of the features that are essential to building a social commerce app:

Autofill

Auto filling is a necessary feature to incorporate in your social commerce app as it marginally contributes to shortening the buying journey. By automatically filling in the payment and delivery details with the help of user history and location at the time of checkout, you can enable a streamlined buying journey. But, also ensure that you provide straightforward options to change the details too.

Visual Product Profiles

We know that traditional eCommerce rests more on text-heavy content than it does on visual content. But, social commerce is all about fostering engagement which happens best with visual content. So, the overall design of your app for product profiles and product posts must be such that it supports visual content.

A study by HubSpot also found out that 84% of consumers felt more convinced to buy a product after watching a video about it. So, incorporate the feature that lets you post videos about your products and have video-based product profiles.

Also Read: E-commerce App Development Trends

Powerful Analytics Tools

To ensure the success of your social E-Commerce app, you need to incorporate powerful analytics tools like Google Analytics, MixPanel, etc. This will assist you with understanding customer practices and purchasing behaviors. Tracking session time, cost of transformation, navigation rates, and successful checkout rate helps you get essential insights into the buyers’ purchasing behavior and the buying journey.

Automated Checkout Bot

An automated checkout bot is an essential feature to have if you’re developing a social commerce app. An automated checkout bot can be the difference between an abandoned cart and a successful conversion. Automate checkout bot helps to simplify the buying journey by turning every interaction that they would generally have with an eCommerce app into a conversation with the bot.

Communication

Enabling two-way communication between the buyers and your customer care executives is one of the most essential components of a social E-Commerce app. But, keep the first layer of query handling and customer service as a chatbot. Other than that, you can also enable direct communication between users so that they can shop with their peers. This feature will help create an immersive shopping experience when the users are shopping together digitally. This will marginally improve your chances of success.

Seamless and Flexible Checkout

The centerpieces of an engaging and satisfying social commerce experience are short and smooth buying journeys. A seamless, uncomplicated checkout plays a key role in holding the whole experience together. Keeping the checkout journey complex or time-consuming results in nothing but abandoned carts.

You also need to make the checkout journey more flexible in terms of payment options. Ensure that your social E-Commerce app provides all the popular and standard payment options, depending on the target audience.

To sum up, apart from the standard features of an eCommerce app, you need to incorporate some additional features to ensure success for a social commerce app. These features will help you shorten and streamline the buying journey and help you bridge the difference between an abandoned cart and a successful conversion.

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