Shop Direct social lead discusses his strategy and thoughts on F-commerce

There’s a few strands to our strategy at the moment. The first is about the growth of the base, so we know that our websites get millions of hits every week, but from a social point-of-view, the numbers are lower, so obviously we need to put as much time, effort and energy into those channels to help grow them. One of the things that we’ve found is that customers to interact with use through our social channels, tend to trade better overall than customers that don’t interact with us on a social channel. We know that forming close bonds with our customers is the right thing to do. The more they trust out brands, the more they become interested in the content that’s going out. We know ultimately that we might not necessarily see it in a direct click, but ultimately it does lead to more commerce, which is why putting that time and effort into the customer base is so important.

Which platforms do you use?

All our brands are on Facebook and Twitter, we’ve got YouTube channels, we’ve got Google+ accounts. Google+ is a really interesting one at the moment; we’re seeing a lot of impact from search through it. Not the level of customer interaction that you might hope for necessarily, but it remains an absolutely fascinating channel.

Are you on that mainly because of search, or do you get anything else from Google+?

It’s twofold. It’s useful from a search point-of-view, as is all social content. You’d be foolish to ignore that, but also from a customer interaction and a sharing perspective. It’s more limited than with what you’re getting with Facebook right now, but that’s not to say that it won’t grow. We know the importance and the sheer size of Google and what opportunities there are in that space, so we’re not ignoring it. And the other interesting development at the moment is the growth of Pinterest. It’s literally hockeysticks in terms of what feels like weeks. The great thing from a brand point-of-view is that content is being naturally shared. So almost without us having to get involved in that, we’re seeing customers finding products that they like and then pinning it on their boards, and their friends are then commenting on it and sharing it. It’s a great thing for customers and a great thing for brands. It feels really natural and unforced and ultimately that will lead to more traffic back into our sites, which has got to be a good thing.

Why does there need to be a difference between the social media platform and the brand’s website?

There’s a number of reasons. One is the sheer size of it. On our websites we can provide a great experience through video, we can provide a great experience through the quality of photography that we have on there. If you want to see the detail on a dress’ sticking, you can see that on a desktop site. On Facebook you’ve got a smaller window to do that, and then obviously mobile is such an important channel for us, and trying to get that across through a Facebook window on mobile will present its own challenges in itself. And then, many of our customers use accounts as they find it much easier to manage their payments – if they can spread their payments across three months for example, or 52-weeks on Littlewoods. We need to be very careful on Facebook. If we’re going to create a secure account environment, then we’re going to need to work closely with Facebook to deliver that and we need to understand if that’s what our customers want to do.

Could we ever see F-commerce overtake e-commerce do you think with retail websites potentially becoming obsolete?

I for one would be surprised if that happened, but the digital space is moving so quickly, I’d say ‘never-say-never’. Who’d have thought that a year ago for us, when mobile traffic was just over 1%, it’s not just over 20%? Who’d have thought that over a 12-month period of time? I would never say that traffic through Facebook will never grow to that over traffic to a website, but right now it doesn’t look likely, but it’s possible.

What are your thoughts on the use of F-commerce?

F-commerce is as much about customers being able to share products with their friends and write reviews of products and share their reviews with friends. The viral nature of social networks and great content means that without directly saying to someone; ‘here’s a pair of shoes for £50’, actually friends and peers see those shoes for £50 in their newsfeed because of people sharing it and commenting on it and posting their own photographs of them wearing those shoes on a Friday night. That’s where social media is different from traditional e-commerce. It’s much more about the wrap around of the user. It’s about the personalising of that content and using it within a social space and giving it context.

How is Shop Direct implementing that?

We launched share bars on all of our sites and pages. We tested it before we fully launched it in January across the brands and we’re seeing a phenomenal take-up of that. Of customers choosing to share things that they like with their friends, which is extremely powerful and actually it’s an enabler. If a customer sees a pair of trainers that they like, then they get to punch the ‘Like’ button, share them will all their user feeds and ultimately you’ve effectively green-lit this product by saying that you like it and it becomes a recommendation back to your peers. It’s a great source of traffic back into Facebook, back into our sites, but also it’s a great source of insight as to what kind of products do our customers actually like and what kind of new products we’re seeing being shared. It helps you pin-point trends and where the new winds are going to be.

You’ve said previously that most retailers are yet to practice this yet. Why do you believe that to be the case?

It’s such an emerging area, and the key to F-commerce is to test-and-learn. It’s about the delivering. Ultimately it is about selling products, but ultimately it’s about understanding that you can do that in a longer-term way by interacting with your customers and getting interested in what you’re doing as a brand. Ultimately that will lead to purchase, but also if you’re going to put products into an F-commerce environment, make sure they are carefully thought about and that they are socially though about. Is it exclusive products? Is it things with an amazing discount that you feel compelled to share? That’s where F-commerce gets really interesting and ultimately you’re picking our products and saying ‘this is something amazing. This is something new. This is something that we think you’ll love’. It’s about having value from a product point of view.

If it comes to developing both the social media function and your e-commerce function going forward, where do you concentrate your efforts?

The key is to make sure that within the shop direct group, that e-commerce and social is fully connected and basically it’s a daisy chain connection with all the other parts of the business. It’s not like we run social media in isolation. Far from it. Social media is a theme that we all get involved in and it has direct involvement within the PR department and massively from the brands and customer services, from merchandising, from legal, from clients. Everyone has to be part of the daisy chain, and that’s the way we think that it works for our group because everybody has a voice. For example, every month we hold a social media forum where we invite people along from the business and we share what we see in the digital and social space and what other people from around the business are seeing as well. It’s not about one pot of expertise, it’s about many eyes. We see a lot of content between us and we ultimately try and share best practice throughout the group and so everybody learns because there are few experts in this field and the more you do, the more you make.

How much of your business is F-commerce at the moment?

We know that there’s a massive portion of people using our Facebook brand pages, and we know that’s leading to commerce and we know that’s leading to increased levels of commerce. In terms of a traditional Facebook store, we haven’t gone down that route. It’s not that we’re not necessarily going to, it’s just something that we’re very carefully thinking about as to what the right route is. It’s not about putting 40,000 products into one giant store and hoping that customers will use it, it’s about how do you hero products and how do you bring products to the forefront of social media space. And we think that is where the winds will be and where customers will like what we are doing within the F-commerce space and how you can bring products to life.