Over the course of 2010, there is one thing that visitors to ZippyCart.com keep asking us about, and this is which ecommerce software solutions have social commerce tools that they can use to better market their online store. At the beginning of 2010, the social commerce tools available to most merchants via their ecommerce solution provider were very limited, but now the top companies in the space are offering a good mix of social commerce tools. Ecommerce merchants are very concerned about marketing their online store, and they’re constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest tools to keep them on the cutting edge. The best ecommerce software companies are aware of this desire, and this is why, over the course of this year, they have continued to introduce social commerce tools to meet the needs of their merchants. However there is still 4.5 months left in the year for these ecommerce companies to improve their tools so that they can be atop the pack in 2011 when merchants start to review if their current ecommerce platform is still the best choice to power their online store.

Why Social Commerce?

Social Commerce is a constantly evolving niche as new techniques and methods are being experimented with so merchants can figure out how to best way to expand the reach of their online store. Some of the ecommerce software companies leading the way right now are 3dcart, BigCommerce, Volusion, and CoreCommerce. These companies provide a variety of social commerce features, but two stand out from the crowd. First is the ability to include the addthis button on your site, so that people can quickly share your products on a variety of social bookmarking sites. Additionally they all provide merchants a way to setup some sort of ecommerce storefront on Facebook and other social networks, so that they can generate revenue from other marketing channels. The ability to sell directly on Facebook is different than just using a Facebook shopping cart app. Instead, all of a merchant’s Facebook sales directly integrate with their ecommerce platform, making it very easy to manage sales throughout channels.

Since the niche is so new, there is still a lot of room for innovation and improvement, and ecommerce software companies are all competiting to ensure that they provide the best social commerce tools possible so that their merchants can be successful. Two things that we see becoming key for merchants demanding social commerce tools, are more automation so that merchants can focus on other tasks, and more advanced ways to utilize Twitter. While it is great that ecommerce solution providers offer social commerce tools, merchants have little time to test out new strategies, and want things to be more automated so that they do not have to spend too much time managing multiple stores. Current Twitter tools from ecommerce software companies are a bit basic, and none that we know of have tools like Wishpot offers in their social commerce platform. They allow a merchant to sync up their product feed to Twitter, and define parameters around price drops, sales, and new items. After a merchant sets this up, they then can control the frequency of tweets, and the platform takes care of automatically tweeting products from the feed that match the criteria set by merchants.

The bottom line is that social commerce is now a must for most merchants, as they need to be able to engage with customers via a variety of mediums outside of pay-per-click search and SEO. As the holiday shopping season draws near, merchants should begin to examine how social commerce fits into their social media marketing strategy. If your ecommerce software does not have any social commerce tools, then you should request them now, and in the meantime review other 3rd party companies in the space to see what they have to offer.

About the Author: Nick Grant is the co-founder of ZippyCart.com, the Internet’s leading ecommerce software review website. Merchants in search of a shopping cart to power their online store turn to ZippyCart to read shopping cart reviews and compare the best ecommerce solutions in the industry and determine which option is best for their needs.

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