December 28, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team
Many people have heard the terms social commerce or social shopping tossed around, but many of the services or technologies associated with these terms fall short in what they accomplish. In 2011 more consumers will be warming up to the idea of social commerce, since it’s a top ecommerce trend that is expected to evolve next year. One company looking to make an impact on social commerce in 2011 is TurnTo, whose mission is to bring the power of social interaction onto ecommerce sites. TurnTo has two different solutions for merchants: social merchandising and product sharing (to be explained in further detail later in this post). ZippyCart was able to chat with CEO and Founder of TurnTo, George Eberstadt, who was kind enough to provide some insight into the company and outlook for 2011. This discussion is summarized below, and should give you a better understanding of what TurnTo does, and where social commerce is headed in the new year.
One of the first things Eberstadt discussed with ZippyCart was the outlook of social commerce in 2011 which began with him suggesting that a year ago he thought 2010 would be the year when the niche became popular and mainstream. However social commerce was slowly embraced by merchants and consumers in 2010, and now things look promising for the ecommerce niche. Many top ecommerce software solutions on ZippyCart started to catch on to social commerce in 2010, as they added more social features and the ability to sell on Facebook in major feature releases throughout the year. Facebook advertising also become more popular in 2010, which means that more merchants will be open to further testing with social commerce, and experimenting with new technologies to improve their conversion rates.
TurnTo has been working with ecommerce stores to turn their customer base into a powerful selling tool, as their technology can leverage customer purchasing information, which future customers can take into consideration when making a purchase. Their social merchandising offering runs on product pages, and allows customers to share their information regarding what they purchase. In addition, TurnTo also has a purchase sharing product that lives on the order confirmation page. Through this tool, an overlay appears and thanks the consumer for their purchase, and asks them if it would be okay if friends and other shoppers could see what they are buying. These two technologies combined provide merchants with a lot more data which can be referenced by future customers, and ideally help drive them to complete a purchase. Consumers are very concerned about their personal data, and TurnTo has a system that allows users to submit their data anonymously, or to be more transparent so their friends can see what they buy.
Product reviews have been popular for many years, as they give consumers added confidence in the purchase they plan to make, but online shoppers want more information to aid them in their decision. TurnTo looks to compliment product reviews, by providing an additional point of reference for consumers, who can see what products their friends are buying at any online store that uses TurnTo, or even what people are buying in their zip code. For now TurnTo is focused on expanding the use of their social commerce technology to other ecommerce merchants, while building other products to help further their social commerce mission and round out their offering.
Time will tell if TurnTo’s solutions will actually improve sales, or even be adopted by enough merchants to help it reach its tipping point. Should it be a success, it will be yet another tool that changes the way consumers shop online, making it a million dollar innovation where everyone wins.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
