How is the surge in social commerce overshadowing the ecommerce space?

India is a developing country, making strides of progress every passing day and has been seeing exponential growth across several verticals. The Gen Z forms a significant part of the country, thus representing the future of India. However, there has been a shift in their perspective and approach, especially since the advent of social media.

With the introduction of social media, society has undergone a vast behavioural change which especially reflected on Millennials and Gen X. Today, most decisions taken by the youth are largely influenced by the content consumed on social media (directly/indirectly).

Evidently seen with their preference towards Online shopping, which recently, due to the pandemic has been getting a lot of traction. According to a report by Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), Indian ecommerce/online shopping is the fastest growing market and expected to expand by 1200% by 2026.

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Ecommerce, the game changer

Online shopping got a facelift lately as it witnessed a surge of 23% order volume. However, ecommerce has a few factors holding the industry back – one crucial factor is how it creates a leakage in the sales funnel, owing to which brands end up shelling large amounts of money on improved advertising to reach a better audience.

The solution to which seems to be social commerce.

With some of the largest labels coming forward, ecommerce has seen a revolutionary breakthrough over time, and also observed the advancement in technology. The comfort of ordering from home, from groceries to gadgets, immediately clicked with consumers as homes turned into trial rooms overnight.

Keeping customer satisfaction as their utmost priority, ecommerce changed the face of shopping, and brought forth an array of extensive options, brands and new trends to the doors of their patrons, quite literally.

Phases of ecommerce

Before the pandemic, people preferred shopping offline. Window shopping in malls and on the streets were their way to discover latest trends and styles. Today, with the pandemic and preference to stay indoors, social media has become their virtual window to discover latest trends and styles.

Also taking into consideration the fact that the current generation thrives on the concept of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), every purchase they make is spontaneously taking up space on their social media, and are being shared on various portals to exchange opinions with each other, and encourage conversations.

Social commerce, the saviour

Despite constant access to content on social media, there is a glitch in the business funnel of ecommerce. For instance, any discovery made on social media would require the consumer to go onto a search engine to read reviews and recommendations and further to an ecommerce platform to make a purchase.

However, the extensive process is tiresome and could lead to a drop in conversion rate of sales.

Social commerce patches up this glitch rightly. Combining the three steps – discovery, search and shop all onto a singular platform greatly improves a customer’s journey of online shopping, and thereby improving the conversion rate of sales, too.

Social commerce is seeing the light of the day and taking over other sectors with the growing demand of online retail therapy and virtual showrooms coming into play.

The gradual shadow

The convenience of social commerce in today’s world especially, is remarkable.

However, there is still scope for ecommerce platforms to bounce right back with social media shortcuts, and by initiating a conversation in social media tabs in a minimised side window which might grab attention of the customers, and help it gain more traction.

But, from the point of a customer, people are currently more accustomed and comfortable with social commerce as it is seeing an ascent, undoubtedly.