I'm not really a fan of buzzwords, but there is a fundamental shift now underway involving how people buy things online and it needs a name. I call the trend "de-ecommercification."
What's going on is the humanization of the web commerce experience, moving away from the cold Google algorithms and toward the rich personal relationships that are embodied by Facebook. If you're any sort of local merchant or service provider -- a real estate agent, doctor, car dealer, plumber, housekeeper, etc. -- this is something you need to start thinking about, and right now.
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It's going to be even bigger than e-commerce was the first time around. But you're going to need to learn some new rules because what might have worked for you in the past could easily trip you up as online shopping changes into a more social experience.
Before the rise of Facebook, web commerce was dominated by Google. You'd use Google to search for a product, and then to check out reviews, compare prices, and go over a merchant's ratings.
It worked well enough, but there was something missing: people.
When they're shopping, people want to talk to people they already know, not to strangers, and certainly not to recommendation engines or page rankings. People are happy to use search to find information. But when they are looking for advice or recommendations, they turn to their friends. You couldn't talk to people with Google, but it happens every second on Facebook.
This is going to be a game-changer for many local businesses, many of which had been driven close to extinction during Google's domination of web shopping.
For a good example, think about community auto dealerships, and how they once had a close relationship with the area and the people they served. (Where would Little League teams have been without their support?) With the rise of Google, these important local businesses became commoditized. A price comparison engine doesn't know anything about service or dealer reputations.
The result was a race to the bottom on prices. This obviously wasn't good for businesses, but it wasn't always good for consumers either because fixating on price while ignoring hard-to-quantify things like customer relationships often makes for an unsatisfying consumer experience.
Social shopping changes all that, turning the clock back to the day when neighborhoods and personal relationships mattered. When you can easily discover which of your friends and neighbors is recommending a car dealer -- or a housekeeper or doctor or real estate agent -- a sense of community is re-introduced.
Facebook, of course, is what's making this possible. With the site closing in on a billion members, it's more important than ever for businesses to not only have a Facebook page, but to view it as one of the foundations of how they reach new customers and keep old ones.
How exactly do they do that? To start, they must directly ask satisfied customers to "like" them. That shouldn't be hard; people who've had a positive experience with a merchant or service provider are usually happy to recommend them to their friends.
There are other steps you can take, as well. You can provide important information, such as updates about local housing trends if you're in real estate. Let people know what you're up to; if you're a real estate agent and members of your community read about each new house as you sell it, it's going to make an impression. Coupons are always popular, since everyone likes a bargain. And engage people in a dialogue; ask them what they think and then follow up on their suggestions.
Here are three things you need to remember as you go about this:
- Stay authentic. Talk to customers on your Facebook page just like you would in person, with your own voice and expressing your own views of the world. And always have a picture of yourself on your page.
- Practice the art of conversation. Talk to people like you would in an email. Remember, in the world of social commerce, you're dealing with real people, not computer algorithms.
- Take advantage of the power of relationships. There are a growing number of sites like Yelp that contain reviews. But I don't consider these examples of social commerce because social commerce is about recommendations from people you know, not reviews from strangers. If two or three of my friends recommend a housekeeper, that's going to trump anything I might read on Yelp.
Another way to think about all this is to understand the difference between what a few years ago was called "search engine optimization (SEO)" and the newer "social media optimization (SMO)." SEO was about doing whatever tricks were necessary to get your site rated higher in search engines like Google. But SMO is a whole different world, involving a thorough understanding of human relationships and the proper use of them.
Human relationships are the heart and soul of de-ecommercification. Merchants who understand this, who take advantage of the powerful tool that Facebook is becoming, will be able to re-engage with their customers after years of being cut off from them by Google's algorithms and server farms. It will be as transformational as the web itself. Get started now in understanding it.
Craig Donato is founder and CEO of Oodle.
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