How ShopSocially’s social commerce platform benefitted Plum District’s business

Even though social media continues to grow and seep into various industries, many companies struggle to translate social media likes and follows into tangible business success. Plum District, a mom-focused e-commerce platform and media property, is an exception, amassing spectacular social commerce gains by adding onsite social media modules.

Recently, the San Francisco-based company, which connects busy moms to high-quality products, activities and inspirations for kids and family, employed ShopSocially’s social commerce platform. Plum District’s e-commerce site is now more social and is increasing user engagement through low-effort, incentive-based onsite social interactions.

ShopSocially, based in Mountain View, Calif., is a SaaS social commerce platform that drives millions of dollars in incremental revenue, new customer acquisition, improved SEO rank, growth in Facebook fan base and word-of-mouth branding for hundreds of top brands.

The apps are the thing

The ShopSocially platform enables a suite of onsite social apps for e-commerce sites. Examples of these apps include social connect, purchase sharing, fan acquisition, shopping community and mobile social reviews. Through ShopSocially, users of a company’s website earn a discount coupon in return for performing a social action, which results in a large uplift in sales conversion.

Plum District is inducing its website users to become Facebook fans by offering them a 10 percent discount on their e-store. ShopSocially’s Get-a-Fan app enables this entire interaction without users ever having to leave the site. This has resulted in more than 5.5 percent site visitors becoming qualified Facebook fans who are converting at a sales conversion rate of 26.64 percent.

By using another app from ShopSocially called the Share-a-Purchase app, Plum District is encouraging shoppers to share their purchases on social networks in return for a discount coupon applicable for their next purchase on the site. This incentivized social sharing of purchases has resulted in 11 percent of shoppers recommending their purchases on Plum District to their friends.

Besides creating valuable social testimonials, these social recommendations are bringing quality social traffic back to Plum District’s website, which is converting at a rate of 34.9 percent.

Positive influence

Onsite social commerce modules can add positive social media influence in the natural purchase flow for a business, resulting in impressive, tangible outcomes. As shoppers share their purchases on Facebook, they connect with your brand and share valuable social profile data. Aggregation of thousands of social profiles allows you to generate deep social insights into your target audience.

These shared purchases also create numerous social testimonials which can be shown on a company’s website and Facebook page, creating social proofs for its deals.

“Social testimonials created out of social sharing of purchases are resulting in uplift in sales conversion and an improvement in SEO rank,” says Jennifer Nuckles, CMO for Plum District.

Social media makes a high impact when used in the context of commerce. Employing social influence in the user’s purchase flow leverages the existing high purchase intent and results in word-of-mouth brand endorsement and a higher sales conversion rate. On the contrary, offsite social commerce strategy often fails to deliver desired results due to lack of user’s purchase intent on social networks.

“E-commerce sites can gain handsomely by the word-of-mouth branding and social testimonials generated from onsite social engagement modules,” says Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially. “We are happy to deliver meaningful sales conversion uplift through our social commerce platform.”

How to reach: ShopSocially, (650) 701-7759 or www.shopsocially.com; Plum District, 

www.plumdistrict.com