Customer Experience in the Social Marketplace

How will your company define customer experience in the social marketplace? As more platforms integrate eCommerce, you may consider selling on these marketplaces. Instagram is the most recent to expand its eCommerce options with Shops.

What kind of relationships do you want with your customers?
Where do you want to sell?
What are the requirements within the marketplace?
What risks could challenge reputation and revenue?

Let’s review what can impact the customer experience.

Customer Acquisition

Participating in a social marketplace helps put your product in front of more eyes. It makes it easier for new customers to discover you.

Visibility

What will make customers choose your product versus a competitor? Product design and packaging will be a key differentiator to stand out on a category page.

What story does your product description tell? Make your product description SEO friendly (including Instagram). Include bright photography to show how the customer will use your product. Photos help the customer visualize the product in their home.

Build a mental picture for online shoppers by writing product descriptions with rich, sensory words that describe textures, moods, and feelings your products create.
Supermaker, How to write irresistible product descriptions

Costs

What is the cost of customer acquisition? Will you spend money on ads to have your product seen? How much will it cost you to convert someone to a customer?

$100 ad spend | 50 views | 5 convert to sales
($100/5 = $20 cost per customer)

This is expensive. It’s even worse if the total of their purchase is low. Don’t spend more than you’re generating.

Lead Generation

Do you want to keep most transactions on your own site for direct access to your customers? If yes, use marketplaces as lead generators. Use your hero product (top-seller) in marketplaces to capture new customers. Then nurture the relationship by creating opportunities for the customer to visit your website.

Why does a customer want to visit your site? How can you make it easy for them to visit? What information will they find on your site they can’t get elsewhere?

Ways to direct traffic from a marketplace to your website.

Copy on product labels and packaging
Shipping inserts
QR codes
Links from transactional emails

Customer Convenience

Customers gravitate towards convenience. The less energy they have to exert, the easier it is for them to take action. Browsing multiple websites and entering payment information each time expends a lot of energy. Customers will tend to shop in marketplaces where payment information is stored. This allows them to purchase quicker. Amazon is a prime example (pun intended).

If participating in a marketplace is not for you, how can you create a similar shopping experience? A simplified discovery process for new products and consolidated checkout.

Discovery Process

For starters, collaborate with shops that share a lookalike audience. Together cross-sell, create bundles, or develop a wholesale partnership.

Honeycomb, a Shopify app, allows you to curate merchandise from other retailers into your store. This is ideal for custom wholesale partnerships. Or you can choose partners from Handshake, Shopify’s wholesale platform.

Checkout

To simplify checkout, integrate easy payment buttons from Apple Pay, Fast, Shopify, or PayPal.

Fees

Will fees impact the price of products? What fees will you incur when participating in a marketplace? Fees may include listing or shelf, transaction, chargebacks, returns, advertising and promotion, etc. Do you have the margin for these fees? How do these fees compare to existing expenses? Create a spreadsheet to compare your costs and assess your profit margin.

Fulfillment

How you manage inventory impacts the customer experience and will depend on multiple factors.

Does the marketplace require you to have a certain quantity of goods?
Are there requirements for where and how you fulfill orders?
What happens if you sell out of an item?
- Will you continue to take orders and pull inventory from another location?
- Do customers join a wait-list? Or are they out of luck?

Marketing

When a customer purchases through a marketplace, the contact information you receive is for transaction information only. You may only communicate with them about payment and shipping/delivery. You may not market to them unless they choose to opt-in. This is dictated in both the marketplace terms and with the FTC. Whether a customer purchases via a marketplace or from you directly, they must opt-in separately for commercial (marketing) content.

To get customers to opt-in to your email list, you must provide something of value. Something they can’t get elsewhere. Offer content to educate, entertain, or inspire them. Then continue to build the relationship with content to help them achieve their desires. This is an opportunity to be creative and stand-out.

Ways to direct traffic from a marketplace to your opt-in landing page.

Copy on product labels and packaging
Shipping inserts
QR codes
Links from transactional emails

Servicing

How will you quickly resolve customer issues? Your promptness and thoroughness impact your reputation.

Is there a place to address frequently asked questions?
Do you have a specific email address to segment customer issues so you can respond promptly to them?

Create a process to effectively address customer issues. A process helps your team provide consistent service to each customer. Using templated responses and rushing through customer issues without completely addressing the concern will create more issues. Thus adding to the frustration of the customer, you, and your team.

Resources

View social marketplaces as a complementary tool for sales. They can benefit your business when used at the right time or exhaust resources at the wrong time. The right solution for you will depend on your goals, needs, and available resources.

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Your Turn

What is your experience with using social marketplaces? Share in the comments below.

Melissa Kay Jones