Shopping Help and Social Networking
With a major proportion of shoppers in the US taking help from social networking websites on the internet for purchasing products, an entirely new and exciting form of shopping has come forth. This is referred to as “social shopping”, formed by combing the terms social networking and online shopping, this intriguing phenomenon can prove to be of great help in promoting businesses and attract customers.
While a majority of retail shopping websites show products for sale, these social shopping websites include a list of products recommended by the members of the website. This helps shoppers in finding out what’s new and hot in any segment. These websites have abated the needs to read lengthy customer reviews to figure out the worth of any product.
The concept of social networking is turning out to be very lucrative for businesses, as listing of products on any prominent social shopping platform can create buzz over that product, leading to a boost in its sales. This word-to-mouth kind of marketing is casting fortunes for entrepreneurs who generally have small marketing budgets. In order to help you taking advantage of this new form of marketing, let’s elaborate how these websites actually do so.
* Online Research And Sales – A number of surveys have already been conducted to find out the impact of online research in boosting sales. Most of these surveys have established the fact that a large chunk of shoppers do carry out research on the product over the web before actually buying it. Not only this, a majority of shoppers consider the internet as their most reliable information resource. So, it hardly matters whether you sell a product online or not, influencing web users can boost your sales remarkably.
* Peer-To-Peer Recommendations Help In Building Credibility – Since the social shopping paves way for word-to-mouth form of marketing, proactive involvement of users in recommending products can turn out to be of great help. Obviously, product recommendations from friends will be considered as more reliable than those conventional customer reviews. Social shopping websites actually reflect user experience with the products and allows users to set-up online conversation.
* Websites Offering Social Shopping Services – There are a number of social shopping websites currently thronging over the web. Some of these websites are:
> Crowdstorm.com – This website gauges the buzz on any product on the basis of user recommendations and then places the most talked about product on top of the list.
> Kaboodle.com – This site allows users to create their own wish lists using images and links to the products for online sales. Users of the site can also post summary of any product they find on the web.
> ThisNext.com – This website allows users to perform a range of tasks including browsing recommended items, adding them to their wish lists, followed by finding out where to buy those products as well as creating themed wish lists of their own.
> Stylehive.com – This site is tailored to serve fashion and other interests of women.
> Wists.com – This website allows users to focus on new hot products along with sharing links to help other members to purchase those products.
Besides, social shopping has also opened new doorway to entrepreneurs to help them market their product in more cost-effective manner. It has helped them to reach a wide base of potential customers.