It’s all about trends. Business trends, consumer trends, and now social media shopping trends. The buzz word for 2010 is ‘trends’.
Why? You ask. Why, because it’s been a year of learning for all of us. As we’ve tried to deal with the economic meltdown, we’ve had to be innovative in our ways of selling, we’ve had to come to terms that we win some and we lose some, even the big search giants have had to change their ways and understand customers better.
But if there’s one thing that’s stood out this year, it’s that online has been the saving grace of this recession – online spend is still on increase; video is fast becoming the way to engage and reach consumers/customers and social media has proven to be more than just a passing phase. So what are the social shopping trends? And what do they mean for businesses?
Online shopping will continue to rise
Ok. Admittedly, nothing to do with ‘social shopping’ but has to be said nonetheless. Online spend has increased and will continue to do so.
We know that more of us are going online to shop. Our current poll on our blog shows that online shopping is a clear winner over the high street. Plus, a recent study from Burst media shows that 85% of people are planning to spend their money online this Christmas season. Not only that, 65% are planning to spend the same amount they did last year – recession or not. The fact is, online is now providing choice that the high street can not match and with ease of buying and selling, this trend can only increase into 2010 and after. As Forrester has forecasted, by 2011 32m UK consumers will be shopping online. So the message here is; if your business is not ready for the trend of online shopping, then you need to be thinking about it.
Online shopping is also about right here, right now
Online shopping is becoming less about out of date information and poor products and services and more about getting what you want, when you want it. Consumers want instant gratification when it comes to online. They want to know about products deals and special offers in the now. The rise of Twitter and the sharing of info via tweets and retweets are a strong indicator of this social shopping trend and likewise, the power of it.
If you missed it, Google and Bing’s recent roll out of ‘real time’ search results, which means that search results now display what people are saying about that search query at that moment in time shows that even the giants have had to bow down to the consumer.
Share and share alike
There’s plenty of evidence to show that shopping is getting social. By that I mean, it’s not you sitting at your desk shopping in isolation or making your own decisions – there’s a real hunger for people to buy from people they’ve heard about.
I was recently at a round table event which saw the likes of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, The Chambers of Commerce come together. But it was the small businesses themselves who made the statement – ‘The power has shifted from the business to the consumer.’
How true. Because, not unlike the offline world, word of mouth is what it’s all about for consumers now. If you haven’t signed up already, consumers are defining market trends – just look at the group effort to upstage the Xfactor’s Christmas number one. On BT Tradespace itself, we’ve seen from recent activity on the new site, nine of the top 10 businesses with fans are in the top 50 most viewed sites. The more fans you have, the more the opportunity to ask them for testimonials and raise visbility of how good your business is.
in short – ‘Consumer is King’
Generating buzz is about online reputation
Fans and followers may be one way of consumers spreading the word on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or BT Tradespace but if fans are about sharing your likes, then testimonials are about generating the right kind of buzz. We’ve all read and been influenced by product reviews on Amazon – in effect, a good review is like a thumbs up for your business. However, testimonials are longer term word of mouth… they have lasting effects for your business because it’s about working with you as business and consumers are influenced by them. Mary (our super web analyst) has been looking at how testimonials work for our own Tradespacers and she’s found, businesses with testimonials typically receive more visits than average – 37% are in the top 500 most viewed Tradespaces.
The main reason for consumers wanting to read testimonials is because reputation and trust is everything to the online experience. I would be more prone to part with my hard cash and card details if, I could see that other people have a trusted relationship with a business online. It’s not a nice to have, it’s a necessity.
Business video has the wow factor
Another social media shopping trend is that consumers aren’t satisfied by a ‘will do’ attitude from businesses online. Most businesses I meet often tell me they’re doing nothing with their website and often I keep replying with ‘would you walk into a deserted shop?’
Consumers want to be delighted by their online experience – just as you and I want to be delighted by our offline experience. The evidence of this lies in the rise of social sites like Flickr and YouTube. To delight your consumers, you’ve got to show that you care for their business. To show that you care, you’ve got be active and try new things.
Online video advertising spend has grown 200% in 12 months and is the new way to engage and connect with your customers. Plus, with dates showing on news/blog posts and the ease of using video and images for your business – it’s easy to tell who’s putting the effort and who’s not. So the question is – what’s your online shop window looking like today?
What next?
The main reason for me sharing this information with you is so you act on it for your business and use BT Tradespace to your benefit. So….
- If you haven’t reset your password since we launched, you need to log in and do so now to get going and take advantage of these social media shopping trends….
- If you have nothing more than your business details on your Tradespace, you need to enhance your Tradespace to start bringing in the customers.
- If you haven’t seen our offer on Flip camcorders to help you get going with your own business video – check it out.
- And finally, if you thought your social media efforts were a pure waste of time… think again.
. But, what’s exciting about the new BT Tradespace is that it gives you plenty of opportunity of increase/improve your search engine ranking, not just on our site and search results pages but on other search engines too. One thing about keywords is that before you start adding them to items, do you reasearch. The words you use to describe your products may not be the words your customers are using to type in to search engines – The Google Adwords tool is free and easy to use to see how popular your terms are. Also, it’s important to not just use words but phrases that are known as 
