Social Commerce Evolution Sparks GoJane’s High Conversion Rates

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April 7, 2011
By the ZippyCart Content Team

One of the major ecommerce trends to kick into high gear this year has been social commerce. As more and more online merchants adopt a social commerce solution, the competition follows, and the pressure to grab bigger conversion rates grows.

Social Commere is on the rise, who's next to jump on the bandwagon?

In the mix is an internet fashion and apparel site for young women, GoJane, which recently partnered with TurnTo, a provider of social commerce solutions, to integrate a new social layer into its site. As the team at ZippyCart last reported, TurnTo launched a social commerce solution Ask Owners in February, but even right out of the gate, Ask Owners is proving a solution for merchants to consider.

TurnTo has harnessed the power of the Q & A format, and in a way reinvented it, with Ask Owners. Ask Owners taps into basic consumer shopping habits. Before a consumer makes a purchase, they tend to consult with friends who have purchased a similar product. Ask Owners leverages this behavior by enabling shoppers to connect with other shoppers who have actually bought the product in question, which has proven to be very successful among GoJane consumers who have become highly receptive to this social layer.

GoJane CEO, Tony Pang had this to comment:

“Questions on popular items at GoJane.com receive an average of 5.6 answers each, and the median time for the first answer is just 43 minutes from when the question is sent.  Since those answers are all from people who actually bought the product, the quality and credibility is very high. This authentic, fast dialog is what customers expect today, especially from a fashion forward, youth brand like ours.”

Just last March, GoJane’s conversion rate of visitors who interacted with TurnTo was over 700% higher than the rate for visitors who didn’t, and over 20% of orders came from shoppers who interacted with TurnTo. GoJane accredits its over 1,700 return customers for that month to its new social layer.

With successes like this, social commerce is proving to be a highly effective tool for online merchants. All the top ecommerce solutions sport some form of social integration as it is shaping the way consumers make purchases.

The beauty in this is, if you are merchant considering to integrate a social commerce solution, you could ask GoJane if TurnTo is worth integrating and see what their answer is, it’s a social layer, upon social layer. See how that works?