Why Discovery Based Social Commerce Will Future Proof Your Business

Like many of us weaning off the highs of holiday shopping 100% online this past year, I felt it important to take a second and reflect on what worked well and where the areas of opportunity in current state e-commerce lie in order to predict what might be the most important bets companies can be taking now to future proof your business. 

What worked well: the tried and true search and convenience of online experiences. Not leaving your house and sending everything you needed to your F&F around the world is a true luxury. This holiday saw the largest growth in the history of e-commerce and with it a huge influx of former in-store shoppers getting to know the ins and outs of how most of us digital commerce nerds have been shopping for decades- welcome to the club.

The area of opportunity: discovery. Answering the age old questions of "I don't know what to get people" and "I don't know what I want" continue to be major pain points for consumers shopping online. I liken the current discovery experiences online with sitting down at a restaurant and either looking at a blank menu (eg a search bar) or flipping through the 50 page Cheesecake Factory menu (eg limitless choices), both are sub-optimal.

For offline shoppers, these two pain points were solved formerly in-store by three strategies:  

• holiday gifting store merchandised displays
• seeing what other customers were pulling off the shelves 
• asking the people who work in-store these questions to help filter down to the perfect present 

For our online experiences, the challenge to solve these pain points lies not in the lack of access to choice- a quick search and you find a sea of options when it comes to DTC websites, mobile apps, and multi-brand retailers offering everything the world produces. The challenge here in analyzing the U/X patterns of these experiences falls short in one main area-- in lieu of an entertaining and value-add discovery experience, all of these platforms have been centralized around the all-mighty SEARCH funnel, a clear U/X choice that no doubt optimizes for conversion but that does not solve the above consumer challenges. 

Some examples to illustrate the point: 

Here’s five different retailers using the same “Discovery” tab to try to solve this problem, and who all follow the exact same formula: 

• New In
•  Sale
• Shop by Category
• Recommended (which only "works" if you have high frequency from your consumer). 

All other actionable digital real estate is given to a more robust SEARCH:

This is great when you know exactly what you are looking for, but certainly does not get after the above two consumer friction points. 

So how do you solve this? How do you stay competitive in capturing your consumer’s time? I observed two big shifts last year in the retail landscape that are worth calling out as a starting point to finding solutions to this challenge: 

1.     Amazon became so frequently used by consumers (I imagine for safety and convenience purposes) that they are now starting to own the lifestyle space. 

2.     While still nascent, social platforms are quietly becoming the new multi-brand retail destination without anyone realizing it's happening.

From these observations, I uncovered two important flywheels to take note of that I will breakdown in the below. When executed in your current experiences, I believe these flywheels have the potential to be rocket fuel to your next wave of digital commerce growth.

Amazon as your family’s new Lifestyle Editor. 

Let’s look at how Amazon solves Discovery compared to the above:

In looking at their modules, my observation here shows their strategy in breaking away from the Discovery formula of the above brands and retailers and beginning to leverage the war chest of what they do best- data-based storytelling. Here you find a series of curated posts leveraging their vast quantities of data/insights on what consumers are not just buying right now, but taking it one step further by highlighting what they aspire to do in their daily lives. Things like “low prices for self care”, “organization for your home”, and “revamping your home office”- these are all "universal truths", things that if you polled your F&F would 100% be areas that people are either actively pursuing or want to do so right now. 

Beyond the above, my favorite post on this feed is actually the one seemingly random post on “ice-fishing”. Why it works? Because consumers know Amazon leverages its community data to show you what everyone is searching for right now and this post simply makes you curious- Who is ice-fishing? Should I be? Is this a new trend? 

The good news is, in order to replicate the above for your brand’s discovery experience, you don’t need the world’s data set in order to know what’s on people’s minds. You do however need to change how you operate your digital business. Rather than starting with merchants, brand managers and site editors planning these modules six months in advance, instead try starting with your consumer data and search queries and work backwards to reflect the right content modules to inspire your consumers in a programmatic way. An example- if you see all of your consumers are searching for loungewear right now, tell your consumers this in your discovery feed- not because of your inventory liability or editorial calendar, but because of the search data query uptick. Better yet, tell them how many users are searching for it and what’s hot within the results stack ranked so they have confidence in what they’re looking at. I would love to see this data transparency storytelling brought to life at places like Nordstrom with multi-brand data sets as it would change the game as to why I'd use their app beyond just searching for things I already know I want.  The more you share what your community is up to (or searching for in this case), the more your community feels invested in it themselves, the more interesting the data set gets and of course the more you'll sell as a result -- meet your new Data-Driven Discovery Flywheel. 

The multi-brand of all multi-brands are the social platforms. 

This one is the most interesting to me for numerous reasons. The formulaic approach to discovery that retailers and brands use to show new and next products is completely disrupted when it comes to how social platforms can crush the competition in discovery. Social platforms like Instagram in fact have owned discovery for years and now with the power of a shopping cart addition are positioned to take the place of both your discovery and commerce engines and make your owned channels long-forgotten by your consumers. Just compare Instagram's ~32 average daily session frequency to an average DAU in commerce today- this session frequency speaks for itself, not even a close match.

For example, take a look at this comparison between Target’s discovery tab (search / utility) and the #targetrun on Instagram. 

The Target option again works great for when I know exactly what I want or am looking for promos, but by Target leading with this use case as their core value proposition in their digital experience, users will only open this app when they need something, eg not that often. 

On the other hand, the #targetrun hashtag that is populated by Target consumers (for free) is constantly being refreshed and has tons of interesting and random products that I’d never find on my own. I call this funnel "the Waze of shopping" in that you inherently trust it because it's consumers just like you posting new things you need to know about. In fact, being a consumer who posts this content makes you feel like you are doing your F&F a solid when you find great items in store they’d love too- creating a digital experience where creating content feels good for both you and your audience is also flywheel gold. Once consumers start checking or following this hashtag, they won't be able to stop. You will quickly find yourself checking often to see what else you are missing out on and here lies the secret sauce to developing incredibly high usage frequency from your consumers and yes, another discovery flywheel.  The more consumers post, the more often all consumers will check, the more often everyone will shop by discovery creating a Consumer Content Discovery Flywheel.  

None of these positive psychology tactics and flywheel effects exist in the current Target app and you’d imagine with one cart integration, Instagram could own the entire Target community by connecting this content engine directly with commerce making the Target app nearly irrelevant overnight. 

So where do Target and the other retail-only apps go from here? 

In this example, by repositioning the purpose of the discovery tab in app, users can create content either in their homes with tagged Target products in situ as consumer reviews or on their own #targetruns. This process can start by simply ingesting your top hashtags into your platform, then evolve by building tools to post photos directly in app and finally reach full media support of stories and live streams that are scheduled broadcasts localized to stores. If consumers start to know when to tune in to see the latest and greatest finds and hot items in-store, you now just shifted the attention away from the platforms and into your owned commerce channel. Layering in fun tactics in the group buying space (will get into PDD in a later post) or gamifying sharing to help spread the word about the latest and greatest merchandise at Target and you just revolutionized your purpose and got back in the game. 

Another stand out example of how platforms are eating the retail world’s lunch is in the short form video and live shopping spaces. It's no longer enough to ask "how may we serve you?" as a retailer today, but now to stay competitive with these platforms for your consumer's attention, retailers must ask "how may we entertain you and serve you- all in one place?" Just take a look at the discovery tab on Tiktok and what Popshop Live is doing to bring to life their community and to help them discover new things.

Compare this to the discovery tabs above and, well, it’s pretty clear who is owning the time and soon after the purse strings of the mobile consumer. Ask yourself- would you rather watch and engage with a highly entertaining community in culturally relevant topics or sort through 1000 new arrivals on a grid wall alone? Now ask a Gen-Zer this question and you’ll see where I’m going with this strategy.

In further posts, I’ll deconstruct how incumbent brands and retailers can integrate both community (the world has shifted from single to multi-player browsing) and video to make compelling discovery experiences and delve into a slew of other trends popping up as the worlds of social, commerce, gaming, and creators are all intertwined into proofing your commerce business for the future.

About me: I am a digital business leader and commerce innovator with a career spanning 17 years across all aspects of commerce and technology. I have spent the past decade creating and scaling new digital businesses and experiences in the mobile commerce and omni-channel space. All views expressed here are my own and do not represent any past or present employers.