Research from Acquity Group points to the opportunity to drive those sales directly from a social platform, with 60 percent of consumers ranking convenience in their top two most important factors when shopping on social media and nearly one-third of consumers saying they would be willing to try shopping on a social site. Already, 15 percent have tried social shopping, according to the research.

There have been numerous predictions around social’s potential to drive commerce sales but with a growing number of merchants adding transactional capabilities to their social media content, this could be the year that potential is finally realized. Social is certainly an increasingly important way that merchants drive interest around their products and brand as well as traffic to their ecommerce sites but, so far, driving actual transactions from social media has been limited, with some early attempts even abandoned by merchants. However, more recent strategies such as social shopping carts point to the ongoing attempts to make social commerce a reality.

Social shopping cart conceptually it seems to be a natural extension of a merchants digital and e-commerce strategies coming together, but it works really well just for retailers with a dedicated fan followers.

Enabling social transactions has its own set of challenges and opportunities, as the social experience is somewhat unique.For example, ease of use and accessibility is paramount with social transactions as consumers are typically looking for a quick diversion. Clearly, consumers won’t modify their behavior to spend money, so interrupting them with advertisements or links to external e-commerce sites is not effective. Instead, the shopping and purchasing experience must blend in with, and even build on, each different social network’s format and its users’ preferred behaviors.
While one of the promises of social commerce is the wealth of data available about consumers, merchants also need to be sure they are leveraging that data in way that is meaningful – and not creepy – to consumers. When it comes to using big data in social marketing, just because you can, does not mean you should. Brands need to find a thoughtful way to use social and other consumer data to aid the customer, as initiatives that are off-target will feel annoying if not invasive.

Twitter has made a big splash in the past year with a couple of big wins on the social commerce side. Starbucks launched a way for customers to sync their Starbucks account to their Twitter account to send a $5 digital gift card to someone. Amazon teamed up with Twitter to enable U.S. consumers to reply to a product-related tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart to save items of interest to their Amazon.com account.

Part of the problem for merchants is deciding in which basket to put their eggs as there a number of competing social media platforms. There are options for adding a social shopping carts on Facebook, which has been adopted by a number of smaller merchants. With earlier efforts to launch Facebook stores were abandoned several larger merchants, the social network is still casting about for the best way to drive transactions. Pinterest, also looking to play a bigger role in social commerce, recently launched a Gifts feed that only shows Product Pins with pricing and a link to purchase right on the pin. On the other hand, there is a growing number of merchants building out their own social platforms, with commerce an important feature, as Sephora’s social program Beauty Board, which enables shoppers to upload photos of looks, tag them with Sephora’s products and shop items or add them to a wish list.

One big opportunity around social commerce is gifting, which represents between 15 percent and 20 percent of all ecommerce, as it can be easy to insert this into a user’s social media stream. Consumers in the digital age spend much of their time on their smartphones, social media, and increasingly, on both simultaneously and the key for retailers looking to break into that space is to stitch opportunities for commerce into the natural stream of social activity. This is a challenge but also an opportunity for many retailers, particularly those with a giftable product line, as these retailers can more easily insert their products into the flow of life events and activity playing out on social networks, such as birthdays, weddings, big announcements.

Clearly there are a lot of opportunities ahead for those who dare to innovate.