It is easy to see why social commerce has become such a big thing. With millions visiting social media sites every day to network, play, work and shop, it is little wonder that commerce is a top activity online.
An exciting, helpful feature of social commerce that has emerged is comment selling.
To fully appreciate this, we need to take you back to the beginning of online commerce.
In the beginning, online shops were created as internet websites or as dedicated apps that enabled a customer to shop when she visited those particular websites or apps. Eventually, merchants decided that instead of waiting for customers to visit them, they will take the market to the customers.
Thus, social commerce was created.
Business Insider says that social commerce falls under the larger e-commerce umbrella, and refers to when a consumer’s shopping experience occurs directly on a social media platform.
Today, a display of products on social feeds is part of the social experience.
Social Selling and its Pitfalls
Social commerce can boast of many success stories but these have not come without hiccups. Potential buyers naturally complete a sale but not without experiencing some challenges.
Merchants making money thus become an elusive venture.
Grace’s Story Grace is a fashion lover who loves to buy clothing or fashion accessories wherever she finds them. She likes Instagram because of the appeal of great visuals and has learned she can pick up style inspiration from the influencers she follows. When she finds a social commerce merchant who has something she wants, she immediately initiates a conversation.
One evening, Grace sees a beautiful dress on a seller’s page. She likes what she sees so she checks the accompanying post’s caption. The details of the item are rather scanty and she desires to know more. The Instagram seller has only written “DM for details”. Grace sighs and starts a conversation: “Hi, do you have this in a size 12?” There is no response from the seller. Days later, the seller confirms that the dress is available in Size 12 but Grace has more questions. “How much is it?”, “Does it come in any other colour?”, “Where is your shop?”, “How do I get it?”
After taking days to respond, the seller could not close a sale with Grace because, as is typical for social media users, Grace was not waiting in between the sporadic responses she was receiving from the seller. She continued to explore her Instagram feed. Eventually, Grace responds and they reach an agreement. The seller shares her account details with Grace.
Grace is switching from Instagram to her banking app to pay for the dress when another post catches her attention. Her favourite Instagram comedian has posted something outrageous and she just has to get into the comment feed. She laughs, reads funny comments and makes a few herself. She fills her entertainment quota and intends to return to her dress shopping when she sees a shoe by another seller and a “DM for price” message. Grace promptly forgets about the dress and begins a chat with the shoe seller.
The Promise and Challenges of Social Buyers
In Grace’s story, the social commerce merchant lost the sale largely because of Grace’s attention span and the failure of the seller to swiftly and effectively engage her in her buying journey.
First, she takes time in responding to Grace and when she does respond Grace is distracted.
This is a common situation; Social commerce merchants try to swiftly respond to enquiries by several potential buyers and find it difficult to do so effectively. They also cross their fingers after engaging them and hope the buyer effects the payment.
In January 2021, Data Reportal said there are over 33 million social media users in Nigeria. This number keeps growing by the day signifying the endless opportunities of social selling.
There may be many potential buyers on social media but grabbing and keeping their attention is a real challenge.
On a global scale, the average daily usage of a social media user is 144 minutes or 2 hours, and 24 minutes. Interestingly, the African average is a whopping 190 minutes or 3 hours and 10 minutes. The more time they are online, the more the possibility your products have to be seen.
On the flip side, while people spend a lot of time on social media, they use that time to jump from one thing to another because human beings have a notoriously short attention span. The most recently reported attention span for human beings is now 8.25 seconds. This means that the social commerce merchant has to engage and hold the potential buyer’s attention long enough to get them to do any business in less than 10 seconds.
Also, valuable time is often lost in the interaction between a seller and a potential buyer. Smart sellers do not assume that their buyers would stay long enough to make a buying decision. This is why comment selling is an effective solution to this challenge.
Comment Selling as a Solution
Comment selling marries social media and commerce by allowing customers to purchase directly through comments on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.
Sellers upload their items and ask customers to purchase by commenting with a predefined keyword in the comment section of the product’s post. In doing so, purchases are made within seconds and the buyers can continue surfing their social media feeds/timelines.
How Comment Selling Works
If you are a seller who wants to use comment selling, these are steps you need to take:
Step 1:· Upload a clear, attractive, and detailed photo or video of your product.
Step 2: Add a product description that would allow the customer to visualize the product. Include product attributes like size, colour, quantity and so on. Give your potential buyer an experiential feel of the product. The more accurate and detailed a description is, the better.
Step 3: Answer any questions a potential customer may have. A seller has to preempt the questions a potential buyer would have and answer them intuitively.
Step 4: Help the customer to make an easy purchase by providing enough relevant information on terms and means of payment.
The more satisfied the buyer feels with the information received, the faster he can make a decision. Human beings buy products using emotion and 95% of buying decisions happen in the subconscious.
Comment selling offers the potential of making buying on social media a subconscious effort. When buyers walk into a supermarket, they easily add items to their cart because they can see, touch, feel and assess the product. When an online shop is properly set up, buyers can likewise “walk-in” and almost subconsciously load up their carts. All it takes for the buyer to make a purchase is by typing the unique, special word provided by the social payment platform.
Why Online Merchants Need Comment Selling
- Time-Saving: when a customer views a product and gets all the necessary information, there is no need to go into a private conversation. For the seller, this also eliminates the need to multitask or chat with various customers at the same time.
- Transparent: A commonly expressed peeve about social commerce is that sellers are not transparent. Customers want to know that the price, quantity and quality of a product are common knowledge. “DM for price” is perceived as sneaky behaviour by social commerce merchants to charge different customers different prices for the same product.
- Fun: Comment selling introduces a fun aspect to buying for the customer. It creates the same kind of emotional appeal that online buyers enjoy. A merchant would enjoy seeing a popular product fly off the virtual shelves with just a single comment. Other buyers can make purchasing decisions simply by seeing how other buyers made fast purchases.
How Credo offers Comment Selling
Credo gives social commerce merchants a platform to sell without having to spend all their time online. With Credo’s comment selling, Merchants can free up time for activities to grow their business instead of spending all day responding to Clients enquiries. Social Sellers can also keep a tap on inventory, do book keeping and get smart insights into their customers shopping journey to make smarter business decisions.
For merchants in other forms of e-commerce, Credo also provides an alternative to running online stores. Our comment selling feature makes it easy for a buyer to make a subconscious purchasing decision.
A buyer can simply comment “Credodibs” on an item. This comment provides the customer with a payment link. With a simple click, purchase is initiated and completed.
We recommend that every merchant should activate the comment-selling feature for product sales.
Credo does more than has been described in this article. To learn more about how you can leverage Credo comment selling feature to increase sales, click here.
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