Encouraged by the success of APAC-based apps like WeChat, several of the world’s leading social networks are rushing to integrate online commerce options into their networks in order to open up lucrative new sources of revenue.
The reasons behind this are not difficult to uncover: a third of social networkers identify “researching products” as a key motivation for using social media while, last month, a quarter of Facebook’s active users say they researched a product via the site. What’s more, social networkers are enthusiastic online shoppers. As today’s Chart of the Day shows, two thirds of Facebookers are shopping online, as are 7 in 10 Instagrammers and three quarters of Snapchatters.
To date, though, the idea of a “buy” button is yet to appeal to most networkers; just 1 in 10 active users on most services say that such a feature would increase their likelihood of buying something online.
Clearly, networkers might be comfortable using social platforms for part of the purchase journey but persuading them to complete their transactions via social media remains a challenge.
To find out more about the current state of online commerce, download a summary of our new GWI Commerce Q2 2015 report here or get the full report here.
