How Social Selling is Changing the Future Of Online Shopping

Do you ever wish shopping online was easier? You're not alone. Just look at the stats on abandoned cart rates in ecommerce sales and you can see there's a problem.

What's the problem? Shopping online isn't easy… until now.

Imagine you're scrolling through your Twitter feed the weekend before a big game, and you come across a tweet from a sporting goods company allowing you to buy your favorite player's jersey at a special, discounted price. You click the "buy" button, enter your info, and you're done. No switching apps. No re-entering credit card and shipping info. You purchase the item and get back to catching up on the latest @birchbox tutorial.

This is exactly what Relay, the new API from Stripe, allows customers and brands to do. By being able to target a potential customer by presenting them with the right item at the right time (and providing them with a quick and painless checkout procedure), brands can gain a sale that might have been an abandoned cart had the customer been rerouted to their website.

Allowing customers to shop within the native platform from which they're browsing is incredibly promising in terms of potential revenue. The possibilities are numerous. More importantly, this could fundamentally change how your customers shop online and change how you approach your customer acquisition strategy.

Here are 3 ways this new API can bolster your ecommerce business through social selling:

Social selling has become more and more popular. In fact, it is estimated that by the end of 2015 social selling will amount to $30 billion worldwide, a 50% increase from 2014's $20 billion. (source)

However, the methods used to sell products through social media have largely remained the same. Brands typically promote both the product and a unique URL in a post, which directs the user to the specific product page. The exact processes tend to vary from brand to brand and channel to channel, but the customer is always redirected from your original platform (be it Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest).

As mobile sites have become a more common platform for purchasing, a decent number of brands have built user-friendly mobile sites that allow customers to switch to their browser app from their Twitter app without much trouble. But this is not true for all brands, and the ones who do not have a mobile optimized site will definitely lose customers to friction in this step (meaning they'll be missing out on sales).

This is where Relay comes in.

Because the user is not moved between different windows or platforms when using Relay, the process becomes much easier. Creating a UX that feels "easy" to the user is one of the best optimizations you can do for your business, and Relay can help you do just that for social selling.

The second there's a problem during the checkout process, shoppers get frustrated and leave. This leaves you with a lost sale and an increasing abandoned cart rate. Believe it or not, 60% of shoppers fail to complete a purchase because of a point of difficulty during checkout. (source)

Your best bet is to have minimal checkout steps (think Amazon's one-step checkout). To create an effective minimalistic checkout, it's ideal for you to:

only require the most necessary info

allow customers to go back a step and review/edit details

enable purchasing without creating an account

Although you may not have all of these options enabled on your own site, Relay can make it happen through your social selling process! One of the best examples of a company using Relay to make the social checkout process seamless and minimal is Warby Parker:

Above, you can see that Warby Parker has enabled Relay for their Twitter checkout. They have optimized it even further  by adding links to FAQ's about concerns shoppers might have when presented with such a minimal checkout. Because of these links to providing the user with more information, they'll feel more secure and confident and in turn be more likely to purchase (User confidence reduces the amount of abandoned carts).

Even though other social platforms like Facebook and Pinterest have recently been jumping into the purchase game with 'buy buttons' and 'shoppable pins', what makes Relay different is that it is a technology that can be rolled out to any third-party application.

Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, Facebook, and Pinterest. Although Stripe has not hinted which integrations will be coming up next, the possibilities seem vast.

That's great news for social media minded ecommerce business owners, because it means they can capture sales on their most popular platform with Relay (whatever it may be).

For example, many brands (like Outdoor Voices) have an extremely strong Instagram presence, but the ability to convert an image into a sale is complex. Imagine being able to post an image of your product on Instagram and allowing the user to buy directly from you without leaving Instagram.

Stripe co-founder John Collison even went as far as to say that after Relay becomes more widely-implemented, "The apps that don't have this are going to seem broken by comparison."

Whatever level of social media engagement your business has, this is a significant advancement in ecommerce technology. Relay looks like it's determined to cater to businesses of all shapes and sizes on all platforms, and the fact that the API is flexible enough to integrate with any third-party application shows that Stripe is trying to focus on thoroughly improving the ecommerce customer experience.

If Relay piques your interest, be smart and stay informed on updates. You can keep up with Stripe on Twitter and follow me and the Blue Stout team, for updates on its progress and what it means for the ecommerce community.

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