Socially Yours
With an online storefront on the Amazon Webstore hosted e-commerce platform, New York-based direct-to-consumer specialty fashion retailer Spiegel LLC is already extending its virtual presence. Taking that extended Amazon Webstore presence a step further into the world of social commerce is the next logical step in engaging consumers in whatever channel they choose.
“We moved to Amazon Webstore one year ago and were vetting for six months,” said Richard Lowe, international creative director, Spiegel. “We custom-built a platform with Amazon to handle our unique merchandising and promotion processes.”
However, Spiegel soon determined that its social platform supporting Amazon Webstore sales did not offer the functionality needed to make it easy for consumers to shop via the social channel.
“We did a social integration push to get an edge,” said Lowe. “We wanted a platform that would make it easy for customers to share potential purchases with friends, as well as to buy.”
This forward-thinking technological attitude was nothing new for Spiegel, a company that built an in-house computer to track customer buying habits in the 1950s and launched its first e-commerce site in 1994. After doing some research, Spiegel selected and implemented the Shoppost social commerce platform from Zantler, which is specifically designed to socially enable several hosted e-commerce communities, including Amazon Webstore.
“With the Zantler interface, you click on a product, choose your size and color, and end up in a shopping cart,” said Lowe. “The cart holds the item automatically for 12 to 24 hours and will send an automatic reminder that the product is there.”
Sharing Is Caring
In addition, Shoppost lets consumers immediately share an interactive picture, including product description and information, with social contacts. For example, customers of Spiegel’s Amazon storefront can send a link of an item to Twitter, which will create an image flyer with multiple views and a product video. Readers of the tweet can click on the Twitter “buy now” checkout button, which brings them directly to the Spiegel Amazon Webstore shopping cart.
“Once in the shopping cart, you don’t have to click through the product on the Web page to get information like size and color,” said Lowe. “It’s all right there in the cart.”
Spiegel hosts Shoppost through the Zantler platform, which attaches to its Amazon Webstore platform with the same login credentials from a separate link. Product information automatically loads into Shoppost.
Spreading it Out
Since going live with Shoppost about four months ago, Spiegel has used the platform to engage customers on the Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest social platforms. Spiegel is also using Hootsuite to test Shoppost in environments it was not originally designed for, such as the retailer’s blogger network.
“We have a large, active blogger community,” explained Lowe. “We can send links of products that our bloggers are discussing to them, and they can link back to them automatically in their posts.”
Lowe also cited the easier social interface Shoppost provides mobile shoppers, who may be more generationally inclined to use social media.
“We have a high number of mobile customers,” said Lowe. “Sixty to 75% of our online sales come from tablets or smartphones, and 80% of our online traffic is mobile. It means we’re attracting a younger consumer demographic.”