Social sites: A way to get 'ants' to find your sugar
Brian Carroll, E-business Editor -- Furniture Today, May 19, 2008
In my last column, I promised an exploration of ways to leverage an important new trend in e-commerce — social shopping. You'll remember that social shopping pairs the social networking capacities of online with the advantages of shopping and buying via the Web.
In some ways, the trend is counter-intuitive, because e-commerce to date has been more about maximizing efficiencies than facilitating the social and expressive dimensions of shopping. But intuitive or not, it is here. Online analytics company Hitwise found that site visits during the holiday selling season last year to social shopping communities such as Stylehive, Kaboodle, Wists and ThisNext were up 683% compared with the year prior.
To help us better understand what social shopping can do, and why it could become important to your business, I have a few scenarios for us to consider.
In the first, an online shopper known for her home furnishings recommendations posts a photo of a room vignette from Rooms To Go to ThisNext.com, a site premised on connecting shoppers with products. Based on the recommendation, shoppers copy the photo to their own blog pages; in the process they deliver RTG some valuable word-of-mouse attention.
The metaphor here is ant behavior. Put some sugar on the counter, then wait and watch the ants find and share it, network and carry it all away.
These new-breed shopping sites provide gathering places for people to swap shopping ideas, browse and blog. And they are best suited for shoppers who aren't quite sure yet what they want. In other words, they are perfect for home furnishings purchases, which require an average of something like eight store visits per purchase.
In the next scenario, your company sends a leading consumer advice blogger information on a new series of home office solutions. A trend watcher and setter who provides information to a growing community of shoppers, the blogger likes what she sees and posts about the series on Kaboodle. Her suggestions feed into an engine that lets other shoppers find products online. Your home office series just went viral.
New features frequently pop up on these shopping sites. At ThisNext, users now can transfer pictures or videos of their favorite products to their personal blog pages. On StyleFeeder, consumers tag and save products, actions that are fed into a database that spins out personal recommendations on new products based on the data.
These colonies are growing. ThisNext draws about 1.5 million users. Media giant Hearst sees the sugar on the counter, and the ants carrying it away; Hearst recently acquired Kaboodle.
So forget mice moving cheese. Think about how you are going to get the ants to find your sugar.
