The Economist has a special section this week on social networking.  They include the chart below pointing out that friend recommendations are the most trusted source of product information.  What’s interesting here is just how far ahead friend recommendations are from the next closest source; eyeballing the “trust completely” bar, the factor appears to be almost 3X.

So if trust is important in your sales and marketing, you really need to be thinking about how to harness the power of social networks.

This will sound like self-promotional hyperbole, and I’m going to say it anyway.  When we started TurnTo a bit over 2 years ago, it was clear that the viability of the business hinged on delivering measurable, positive business results for the ecommerce sites we planned to have as customers.  But, of course, there was no way to know for sure what the numbers would look like without building a product and finding customers to really use it.  So we plunged in, built the product, brought merchant partners on board, gained experience, and put in place the systems to measure if we were really doing any good.  And today, in conjunction with three of our partner merchants, we announced some actual results.  So this is the self-promotional, hyperbolic part: it truly did not occur to me when we set out that we’d be able to deliver numbers this positive.  I thought if we would able to show a conversion effect of 10% or 20% we’d be doing pretty well.  And here’s the data from over the holidays for these three sites:

Conversion rate of shoppers who opened the TurnTo widget vs. the baseline (shoppers who didn’t):

Jomashop.com (IR #209) Watches and luxury goods: 6 X the baseline (i.e. 500% higher)

ChristianCinema.com, Christian-themed DVDs: 8X the baseline

ePartyUnlimited.com, gifts and party supplies: 8X the baseline

To be sure, we know we’ve got a lot more measurement work to do before we fully understand the effect the TurnTo system is having on shopping behavior.  But still, after 2 years, it’s very nice to be able to announce numbers like these.

Optaros’ “Social Ecommerce Ebook” makes for great reading if you are trying to optimize the performance of your ecommerce site.  You can download it here.

They make the points that: 1. higher levels of shopper engagement on retail sites drive improved business performance, and 2. social commerce tools are a powerful way to drive engagement.

A couple highlights:  From the Harvard Business Review Article, “In Ecommerce, More is More“, they cite,

The majority of managers we spoke to in our global study told us they believe that a broad array of information diverts attention from the core offerings. But we found it helps customers search for solutions, invites them to think of all the ways the core products might add value to their lives, wins their loyalty, and entices them to buy. In fact, we found that exploiting consumers’ desire for engagement is the single dominant driver of superior shareholder value for e-commerce companies.

In the section titled “Making Shopping a Social Experience,” (p.44 on) they cite an article in the Wall Street Journal on the benefits of social shopping.  (The article features the positive results Teavana and Compsource are seeing from their TurnTo implementations!)  Their “Business Takeaway”:

People like to go shopping with others when shopping in person. With Facebook Connect and other social shopping applications, you can replicate this experience for your customers online.

The bottom line of their study (well, it’s actually more like the title): “Retailers Achieve Higher Conversion Rates Using Social Shopping.”

There’s a session at the next ANA Shopper Marketing Committee I’d really like to attend.  (But I’m not a member - sigh…  If you are a member, you can find it here.)  The point of the session is so important for multi-channel retailers, I’m copying the description here.  I’d put it this way: don’t just use your web presence to sell; use it to create a connection to your brand that will bridge from your site all the way to your store.  One of the most powerful ways you can do this is with social merchanising tools (like TurnTo) that show visitors that their friends are also customers.

11:30AM- How Shoppers Shop: The vast majority of shoppers conduct research before they go to store, with an increasing proportion of them spending time online, not only looking for deals, but also getting recommendations from friends, looking at product reviews, and comparing product information. Moreover, online research and recommendations are having a greater impact on what makes it onto shopping lists. With roughly half of women indicating that they have purchased products based on recommendations from friends, viral marketing represents an important opportunity to engage shoppers before they go to the store. While significant attention has been paid to the roughly two thirds of brand decisions that are made in the store, the growth in digital shopper marketing represents a major opportunity to increase preference and purchase intent earlier along the path to purchase.