Social Commerce: An interesting online shopping option

The Ecommerce is moving away from what it use to be in late 1990s. During the early 1990 we saw a sudden rise of e-commerce which busted with the dotcom burst. But with the emergence of Web2.0 technologies we once again see a rise in web based commerce sites. The new avatars of online business also known as “Social Commerce”  are using the latest social media technologies to engage customers.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of social commerce:

“Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that employs collaborative social media tools to assist in online purchasing and selling….  ..,the term social commerce has been expanded to include a variety of collaborative commerce activities such as social shopping (co-browsing), collaborative purchasing (collective buying power), collaborative filtering (social recommendations), and collaborative funding (e.g. Crowdfunder).”

Some of the interesting categories of Social commerce sites I have come across during my research: -

Social Shopping

• www.woot.com:- a very interesting Social shopping website which deals in only one product a day. Idea is to provide the best rate on one product every day. Most of the products they sold form the stock and as soon as the product is sold out they have sold out banner on the site.

• Ebay Neighbourhood: – Ebay has recently launched 700 micro social networks categories under its ebay neighborhood. All these neighborhood is around product categories on ebay

• www.shopstyle.com: – It is a one-stop-shop site for customers interested in high end designer brand names. User can buy items from the most popular designer brands to an upcoming boutiques. They have many interesting features like Stylebooks, Sale Alerts, My Brands, WishList, etc.

Social Wishlist

• www.kaboodle.com: a social network site for fashion and lifestyle shopping. They provide a button which helps users to add products from different websites. Users can create different kind of list like shopping lists, wish lists, themed lists and share it with friends. Users can bookmark products which they are interested in. They can also view the products which the online community has bookmarked and thereafter take a informed decision whether or not to purchase the product

• www.wishpot.com:This site allows you to make a wish list of items that you desire to purchase in the future. The website also provides one unique feature. It gives useful advice like where to buy the product, the best available price etc. Thus saving both time and money.

• www.thisnext.com: An interactive wish-list based shopping network with a recommendation system based on opinions from real people. This Next Expert community – where there are expert on different categories called “Expert Maven” and you can get expert opinion on the products you want to buy.

• www.stylehive.com: A social shopping network that allows users to share and recommend favourite items or special deals with other friends/members. Merchants can post items or products from their catalogue. The site contains many user-engaging features such as messages, blogs, communities, wish lists, giveaways, bookmark, follow shoppers/retailers, stylediary, contests, polls, discussion forums. The site also allows numerous offsite sharing.

www.dealspl.us: Deal Plus is a user-generated online shopping community where Members can submit deals, coupons, and rate them. The highest rated deals/coupons make it to the homepage.

www.SaleGrab.com: Present ‘sale’ opportunities and specific retailers that are currently having sales or offering coupons. The main page displays the newest sales and lists them in an eBay style format with a photo, description, price or sale gimmick and a link to the retailer.

Social Catalogue

• www.zloi.com: Zlio allows users to choose a set of products they like and create their own personal page. Users can promote this page, and also display a picklist widget on their blog or social networking profile. The key element is revenue sharing, Zlio is built upon affiliate partnerships with merchants, and users are paid whenever someone buys a product on their Zlio page.

Product Review sites

• www.crowdstorm.co.uk:  A social media community is build around the idea of “Wisdom of Crowd” that helps its users to research and find the right products. Crowdstrom’s Social Price Comparison which aggregates the prices across a range of price comparison engines and merchants, and let’s users know where other people went to buy that product and what they paid

• www.productwiki.com: A resource for high quality product information including what the product is all about and what it has to offer. It is not just rating and review site. It’s a fantastic resource for customers who are planning to by a product or wants to know what options are available for a product category.