Social by design

At ChannelAdvisor’s excellent Catalyst conference in London this week, one of the most interesting presentations was from Facebook. Talking about the principles of social design, it resonated with several other developments of late.

Facebook’s first principle is ‘people first, content second’. Now in retail terms, content is replaced by product, which may seem like a strange idea. But any ecommerce director will tell you how simple changes to the user experience on a website can have a big impact on conversion and sales.

And this is a principle which could also carry through to the design of the multichannel customer experience. You may be selling a given product at the lowest price, but if customers can’t access it conveniently – for instance using a click-and-collect service or can’t read customer ratings and reviews while they are browsing in store – then you might  not make the sale.

The second principle is making sharing easy and fast. Facebook talked about the success UK retailers have seen from adding Facebook ‘Like’ buttons to their product pages. Retailers have long known that consumers can be their best salespeople, and enabling loyal customers to be advocates will be crucial in the future.

The third principle follows on from this - a few can activate many. Reaching the right few customers with great offers and driving their loyalty and brand advocacy can pay dividends many times over if they are the kind of people who influence others’ spending. The power of good and bad stories about retailers spreading on sites such as Twitter is a prime example of this, and requires technology to monitor and help retailers make decisions based on the trends they find.

And finally is the principle that ‘your friends are there’. For retailers this may mean enabling customers to help each other with product recommendations and customer service issues. Providing free WiFi in stores to make it easier for customers to use their smart phones is already on the agenda, mainly because retailers have started to realise that customers may want to send pictures of products to their friends before making a purchase decision.

Social media is not the answer to all retailers’ prayers, but the way social media developers think is something that should resonate and be of interest to all in retail.