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As the spooky season comes to an end, most businesses prepare for the buzz of Christmas while others, eager to be ahead, zoom straight into focusing on their goals for the new year.
2022 will hopefully hold the least impact on us from Covid since it struck in 2019; since that year a clear shift to online shopping took place opening up endless opportunities in the world of e-commerce. Now that Covid slowly slips further out of our lives it begs the question: what is the future of eCommerce?
Forecasts show that for the future of global retail eCommerce sales, the only way is up. It is predicted that ecommerce sales will surpass $1 trillion in 2022 and make up over 20% of total retail sales by 2024. With this in mind social media networks must be working behind the scenes preparing for this new opportunity to enhance their softwares right?
We will outline for you some of the ways in which your favourite social media channels may be making changes in the upcoming year, setting their foundations for the new normal of online shopping.
Livestream-commerce
Although livestream shopping was first done in Asia in 2017 it has slowly dripped down to the rest of the world and has now been tried, tested and now promoted by global online platforms. For example Youtube has announced their hosting of a week-long live shopping event, “YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop,” starting on November 15th. Viewers will be able to view and shop new products as well as ask questions via live Q&A features.
Other major platforms Facebook and TikTok will be jumping on this strategic marketing trend over the course of 2022 updating their apps with new features to facilitate this new mode of shopping. This is an ideal opportunity for your business to take advantage of; you must prepare through finding influencers to promote your products ahead of the new year. As mentioned in our ‘Reactive Marketing: Creating irresistible social media campaigns’ blog post, planning ahead with your content online can save you more time in the future to focus on current events and staying ahead of the social media marketing game.
Twitter Shopping
Twitter will be continuing efforts next year developing how users can be allowed to make in-app purchases via tweets. They may even extend this to the adoption of Twitter livestream shopping however these trials will be pushed towards the latter half of the year if at all.
Earlier this year Twitter released the Twitter Module allowing a handful of US brands a feature where users can scroll through their carousel of products and tap through on a single product to learn more and purchase without having to leave the app. Over the course of next year we advise you to keep an eye out for when Twitter commerce comes into full swing so your business can use this platform to promote your products to a wider audience.
Instagram Commerce
Major developments have come underway over the past couple of years with a redesign of the app's interface as Instagram continues to explore the best way to encourage users to shop while browsing through the app.
Although Instagram business profiles date back as far as 2014, the company has made it accessible now for any user to create one. If you are considering publicising your online shop via Instagram we highly recommend checking out their website https://business.instagram.com where they provide a digestible guide to running your business through your Instagram profile. They give tips from developing the right strategy to reaching your target market.
It seems that commerce is the priority for Instagram for the time being and going forward into 2022. They will be focused on creating users' habitual usage of their app to make purchases through the testing of new shopping options throughout the year.
TikTok where’s the shop?
Being essentially the newest of social media apps on the scene TikTok is slightly behind on their e-commerce functionality. Arguably because they haven’t had a struggle in keeping user engagement as other apps have with the average user spending over 60 minutes per day on it in The UK and U.S.
In September last year TikTok introduced their Marketing Partner Program for advertisers where they partnered with advertising industry leaders who would aid marketers like yourself on the app in campaign management, creative development and more.
Throughout 2022 you should expect to see TikTok developing their creator marketplace to work on facilitating the ecommerce and branded partnerships throughout the app as this is the most efficient way for creators to make revenue on the app. You may even expect to see them also join the livestream shopping trend as livestreams are a very popular feature within the app.
At Wholehearted we are here to facilitate your business online and help you make the most out of the ever growing e-commerce features being developed across all social media channels. Utilising social media to reach your audience and now sell your products is now essential in e-commerce and we would love to help your brand reach its full potential.
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