What Is Social Commerce? A Complete Guide for Brands
How to build a futureproof relationship with AI
Social commerce allows you to shop directly on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook without leaving the app. It's reshaping online shopping by making it faster and simpler for users to discover and buy products while scrolling. With features like shoppable posts, in-app checkout, live shopping, and AR try-ons, brands can engage customers where they spend their time.
Key Points:
What it is: Shopping integrated into social platforms.
Why it matters: Reduces steps to purchase, boosting sales and engagement.
Market growth: Expected to hit $2.9 trillion globally by 2026.
Platforms to use: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Social commerce isn’t just about convenience - it’s changing how people discover and purchase products while helping brands build trust through user-generated content and influencer collaborations. The future includes AI-driven personalization, live shopping events, and tools to streamline operations.
The Lazy Girl's Guide to Social Commerce
How Social Commerce Works
Social commerce bridges the gap between discovering a product and making a purchase. Instead of navigating through multiple steps across different platforms, users can now make a purchase with just one tap - right from their social feed. Here's a closer look at the features that make this process so smooth.
Core Features of Social Commerce
Shopping through social media feels like a natural extension of scrolling, thanks to several key features. Shoppable posts use product tags that reveal pricing and details when tapped, making it easy for users to explore products. In-app checkout takes convenience a step further, allowing purchases to be completed instantly using saved payment details - no redirects, no extra tabs, and minimal hassle.
Live shopping events bring a real-time, interactive element to the experience. Brands host live streams to showcase products, answer questions via chat, and offer exclusive deals. In China, these events have achieved conversion rates nearing 30% - a figure that’s up to ten times higher than traditional ecommerce. Meanwhile, AR try-on tools address one of the biggest hesitations in online shopping: uncertainty. These tools let users virtually try on makeup, preview how furniture would look in their home, or see how accessories might suit them before making a purchase.
Another standout feature is conversational commerce. Through direct messages or platforms like WhatsApp, brands can provide instant customer support, check stock availability, and even process payments - all within the chat. This replicates the personalized service of an in-store experience.
Together, these features create a shopping journey that feels both intuitive and engaging.
The Customer Journey: Discovery to Purchase
Social commerce transforms the shopping journey into a seamless flow from discovery to checkout. Instead of starting with a deliberate search, the journey often begins with discovery. For example, a TikTok user might see a creator demonstrating a skincare product in a short video. With a quick tap on a product tag, they can read reviews and complete their purchase - all without leaving the app, often in under a minute. In fact, 83% of Instagram users find new products on the platform, and 49% of TikTok users have purchased a product after seeing it advertised or reviewed.
Throughout this journey, social proof plays a crucial role in building trust. Take luxury apparel brand SIMKHAI, for instance. By using Shopify Audiences to target high-intent shoppers on social platforms, they saw a 54% drop in cost per acquisition and an 84% boost in conversion rates. Even more impressive, 89% of their new customers came directly from this strategy. Similarly, backpack brand WOLFpak achieved a 433% increase in global sales over 18 months by leveraging tools that engage customers right where they spend their time.
Social commerce is redefining how people shop, making the process faster, more interactive, and deeply connected to the platforms they already love.
Social Commerce Platforms
Social Commerce Platform Comparison: Features, Audiences, and Best Use Cases
Platform Options and Features
Each social platform brings distinct tools to the table, offering unique ways to connect with shoppers and drive sales.
Instagram is all about visual storytelling, making it a go-to for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands. Its Shop feature acts as a digital storefront, allowing brands to tag products in feed posts, Stories, and Reels. The dedicated Shop tab helps users discover items, while the option to complete purchases through direct messages creates a conversational shopping experience. With half of Instagram users engaging with at least one brand daily, it’s a powerful tool for building connections.
TikTok has redefined how people discover products with its short-form videos. Through TikTok Shop, users can buy directly from videos and live streams, riding the wave of trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt that encourage impulse purchases. Interestingly, 43% of Gen Z now start their product searches on TikTok instead of traditional search engines.
Facebook offers unmatched reach across demographics. Facebook Shops lets brands showcase full product catalogs, while Marketplace facilitates both local and broader sales. Its Messenger integration enables real-time customer support, including automated chatbots. Notably, 62% of U.S. social buyers reported making their most recent purchase on Facebook.
Pinterest operates more like a visual search engine than a typical social platform. Its Product Pins sync pricing and availability automatically, and the Shopping List feature alerts users to price drops on saved items. With 97% of Pinterest searches being unbranded, the platform is ideal for discovering new brands. It’s especially popular among high-income households - those earning over $150,000 - making it a strong choice for home decor, DIY, and wedding-related products.
Snapchat stands out with its augmented reality (AR) capabilities. Shopping Lenses let users virtually try on items like makeup, glasses, and accessories before buying. The platform has significant reach among Gen Z in over 20 countries, and 82% of Snapchat users say shopping is one of their favorite activities.
How to Choose the Right Platform
Selecting the right platform starts with understanding your audience’s habits and preferences. Gen Z tends to favor TikTok and Snapchat for entertainment and discovery, while Pinterest appeals to users who are actively planning purchases, such as for home projects or special events.
The type of product you’re selling matters, too. Visually striking, impulse-buy items like fashion and beauty products thrive on Instagram and TikTok. Meanwhile, more expensive or complex products benefit from platforms like YouTube, where long-form tutorials and reviews help build trust. In fact, 38% of YouTube users discover new products through the platform. For home goods or furniture, Pinterest’s visual search tools and high-intent audience make it a great fit.
It’s also important to distinguish between platforms that drive accidental discovery versus those that cater to intentional searches. TikTok and Instagram are perfect for sparking unexpected interest, while Pinterest attracts users actively seeking inspiration or solutions. This difference explains why conversion rates and buyer behaviors vary across platforms.
To keep things manageable, focus on one primary and one secondary platform. For example, Snug, a London-based furniture brand, used Instagram as their main platform for a live social-selling event in November 2021 featuring comedian Katherine Ryan. The result? A 450% increase in sales compared to a previous event. Expanding to additional platforms should only happen when performance data supports the move.
Finally, leverage native platform features to reduce friction in the buying process. If your product benefits from try-before-you-buy experiences, Snapchat’s AR lenses or Instagram’s AR filters can help overcome hesitation. For brands that rely on community engagement, Facebook’s Messenger and group features are excellent for fostering ongoing relationships. Meanwhile, TikTok’s live shopping events work well for products that shine in real-time demonstrations, creating urgency with limited-time offers.
The key is aligning your platform choice with your audience’s behavior and your product’s strengths for a tailored, effective social commerce strategy.
Building Your Social Commerce Strategy
Define Goals and Target Audience
When crafting a social commerce strategy, start by setting goals focused on driving conversions rather than just boosting brand awareness. Social commerce thrives on direct sales through tools like shoppable content, in-app checkout, and live streaming. It's essential to have a clear purpose that aligns with your brand's values - especially since 66% of customers have stopped supporting brands they feel disconnected from, and 88% expect brands to communicate clear value statements.
To truly understand your audience, go beyond surface-level demographics. Dive into platform-specific research by studying competitor activity, analyzing demographic data, and reviewing your own analytics to pinpoint where your customers spend their time. Social listening tools can help uncover customer needs by tracking reviews and mentions. Additionally, surveys, polls, and quizzes provide valuable first-party data on what drives purchasing decisions. Take skincare brand Bambu Earth as an example: they use Meta ads to direct users to a "Skin Quiz" that collects details like age, skin type, and concerns. This approach has helped them generate over $10 million in annual revenue.
Mapping the customer journey is also crucial. By identifying key moments during discovery, engagement, and decision-making phases, you can deliver the right content at the right time. These insights are the foundation for creating content that truly connects with your audience.
Creating Content and Using UGC
Social commerce content generally falls into three main categories: educational, inspirational, and entertaining. Formats like product demos, unboxing videos, "day in the life" segments, and problem–solution stories resonate because they showcase products in relatable, real-world scenarios. User-generated content (UGC) is especially impactful - 65% of consumers say it influences their purchases, and 52% are highly likely to buy after seeing positive reviews.
"UGC is a game-changer for building trust faster than traditional ads. It helps convert new customers who are just discovering the brand."
Siona Baldwin, Communications Manager, Jade Leaf Matcha
Reposting customer photos and videos builds trust by offering an unbiased perspective. Partnering with micro-influencers is another effective strategy, as their smaller but highly engaged audiences tend to trust their recommendations more. For instance, ramen brand immi launched a creator-led ambassador program using Shopify Collabs in 2025. By providing free samples and personalized affiliate links, they recruited over 400 ambassadors and generated more than $200,000 in sales within just a few months. Similarly, premium travel brand Solgaard experienced month-over-month revenue growth of over 287%, bringing in more than $50,000 in sales shortly after launching their program.
To make your content easier to find, optimize it for social search. Use relevant keywords in captions, video subtitles, and hashtags. This is especially important as 46% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials prefer searching for products on platforms like TikTok and Instagram rather than traditional search engines. Hosting live shopping events is another powerful tactic. These events allow you to answer questions in real time, demonstrate products, and include product tags for instant purchases.
For brands looking to scale content production without the hassle of manual creator outreach, AI-powered tools can generate UGC-style videos on demand. These tools maintain the personality and authenticity of real creators while enabling quick, large-scale content production across campaigns.
Tracking Performance and ROI
Once your strategy is in motion, tracking performance is critical to refining your approach. Focus on three key areas of metrics:
Awareness metrics like impressions, reach, and share of voice help gauge your brand's visibility.
Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks show how well your content connects with your audience.
Conversion metrics, including sales revenue, conversion rates, and lead generation (e.g., newsletter signups), directly measure your return on investment (ROI).
To calculate ROI, divide revenue by total costs. Metrics like Earned Media Value (EMV) and cost per action (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL) can also help you evaluate budget efficiency. For instance, cosmetics brand Laura Geller used Shopify Audiences in 2025 to target high-intent customers on Meta and TikTok. This led to a 140% year-over-year revenue increase, a 15% drop in customer acquisition costs, and a 6% improvement in return on ad spend.
Customer loyalty metrics are equally important. Factors like response time - 73% of consumers expect a reply within 24 hours - and Customer Lifetime Value offer deeper insights into your overall performance. Use these metrics to continually test and optimize your strategy. Whether it's tweaking creative elements or adjusting inventory based on social listening trends, rely on data to guide your decisions rather than assumptions.
Using AI and Automation for Social Commerce
AI-Generated Content at Scale
Creating engaging content for social commerce can be a tough nut to crack. AI-powered tools are stepping in to simplify the process, automating the creation of user-generated content (UGC) videos, product demos, and shoppable posts. What used to take weeks of coordination with creators can now be done in minutes, giving brands a serious edge.
Take TwinTone, for example. They use AI Twins - digital clones of real creators - to produce UGC videos that mimic the creator's unique tone and style. This allows brands to churn out product demos, unboxings, and testimonials on demand. The same technology is even powering AI-hosted livestreams on platforms like TikTok, Amazon, YouTube, and Shopify, offering 24/7 shopping experiences that keep customers engaged whenever they log on.
Other tools like Crayo and Synthesia are making it easier than ever to create short-form videos for platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok. These tools cut production time from hours to just minutes. The ability to scale is a game-changer: 90% of marketing professionals now rely on AI to automate customer interactions. Plus, brands can tweak a single piece of content into multiple versions tailored for different platforms and campaigns, making personalization more achievable than ever.
Personalization Through AI
Generic recommendations? Those just don’t cut it anymore. In fact, 76% of shoppers expect personalized experiences. AI delivers on this demand by analyzing everything from browsing habits to purchase history and even real-time behavior, creating shopping experiences that feel tailor-made.
In 2025, cosmetics brand Laura Geller made waves by using Shopify Audiences to automatically generate high-intent customer lists synced with Meta and TikTok ads. The results? A 140% increase in year-over-year revenue, a 15% drop in customer acquisition costs, and a 6% boost in return on ad spend. Similarly, U.S. Bank used Salesforce's Einstein AI for predictive lead scoring, which led to a 25% uptick in closed deals, a 260% rise in lead conversions, and a 300% increase in marketing-qualified leads.
AI also brings together customer data from social platforms, websites, and apps into unified profiles through Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). This allows brands to automatically trigger personalized actions - like sending a "We miss you!" message or suggesting products based on abandoned carts. The payoff? AI-driven personalization typically boosts conversion rates by 15–25% and can help fast-growing brands generate 40% more revenue through hyper-personalization compared to their slower-growing competitors.
Scaling Operations with Automation
Scaling social commerce isn’t just about personalization - it’s also about efficiency. Managing social commerce manually is simply not sustainable. Automation steps in to handle repetitive tasks like scheduling posts, answering FAQs, syncing inventory, and routing important conversations to sales teams. This frees up time for teams to focus on strategy and big-picture goals.
For instance, in 2025, the Arizona Cardinals used the Emplifi platform to automate social media reporting and engagement workflows. The result? A 90% reduction in reporting time and a 15% boost in total social interactions. Travel brand Solgaard also leaned on automated influencer management tools to scale its ambassador program, achieving a 287% month-over-month revenue increase and generating over $50,000 in sales since launch.
Automation platforms can also unify customer conversations across apps like WhatsApp and Instagram, keeping all interactions in one place. This makes it easier to manage high message volumes without losing context. AI even analyzes conversations in real time, prioritizing and routing high-intent interactions to the right teams. As Maheswari Ganga from Omnichat puts it:
"AI will transform social commerce from a reactive support function into a proactive growth engine".
With social networks projected to account for 17% of all online sales by 2025, automation isn’t just helpful - it’s essential. By streamlining operations, automation strengthens a brand’s overall social commerce strategy and keeps them ahead of the curve.
The Future of Social Commerce
What Brands Should Remember
Social commerce is no longer just a buzzword - it’s a powerhouse for driving revenue. The global market is expected to surpass $3 trillion by 2030, with U.S. sales alone projected to hit $137.06 billion by 2028. Brands that embrace social commerce often see higher engagement, better conversion rates, and lower customer acquisition costs.
AI is playing a huge role in this shift. By automating content creation and customer service, AI allows brands to scale quickly and efficiently. Take luxury brand SIMKHAI, for example. In 2024, they used Shopify Audiences’ AI-powered targeting to cut their cost per acquisition by 54% while boosting conversion rates by 84%. Even more impressive, 89% of their new customers came from these AI-targeted efforts. Another example is MAM UK, which adopted Bazaarvoice Social Commerce tools to integrate user-generated content directly into their storefront. The results? A 108% increase in conversion rates, a 58% rise in average order value, and an extra $120,000 in annual revenue.
The message is clear: social commerce works. And with the scalability AI provides, brands are well-positioned to capitalize on this growing trend. But the story doesn’t end here - new developments are already reshaping the future.
What's Coming Next in Social Commerce
The future of social commerce is set to be even more dynamic, with exciting advancements on the horizon. AI is evolving from simple automation tools into fully autonomous shopping assistants that can guide customers through every stage of their journey, from product discovery to post-purchase care. Live shopping is another area experiencing explosive growth, with annual growth rates projected at 37.2% through 2033. Platforms like TikTok Shop are leading the charge, with forecasts suggesting it could generate $87 billion in gross merchandise volume by 2026 - a staggering 56% year-over-year increase.
Consumer behavior is also shifting. Nearly one-third of shoppers - and more than half of Gen Z - now start their product searches on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube rather than Google. For brands, this means optimizing for "Social SEO" is critical. Instead of focusing solely on viral content, they’ll need to prioritize searchable keywords and visually engaging posts to capture attention.
Personalization is becoming the name of the game. Jared Pobre, Cofounder of Caldera + Lab, highlights the importance of creating tailored experiences:
"Brands will also need to implement one-on-one social media experiences with prospects through conversations in private messages... A more personalized engagement experience will make prospective buyers and new customers feel valued."
Looking ahead, the brands that succeed will be those that unify their technology, embrace AI-driven personalization, and treat social commerce as a major growth engine rather than just another marketing tool. The future is about being proactive, adaptable, and ready to meet customers where they are - on social platforms.
FAQs
How can brands use user-generated content to boost social commerce?
Brands can harness the power of user-generated content (UGC) to boost social commerce by encouraging customers to share their real experiences with products or services on social media. UGC acts as a form of social proof, helping to build trust and sway purchasing decisions. By showcasing customer reviews, photos, videos, and testimonials on social media platforms and product pages, brands can create a shopping experience that feels more personal and relatable.
To inspire customers to share their content, brands can organize campaigns or contests, offering perks like discounts or public recognition as incentives. Having a system to monitor and curate UGC is crucial to ensure its authenticity and uphold quality standards. AI tools can simplify this process, making it easier to personalize content and engage with customers on a deeper level. By integrating UGC into their strategy, brands can turn happy customers into enthusiastic advocates, foster stronger community ties, and drive more sales.
How can AI and automation improve social commerce strategies for brands?
AI and automation are reshaping social commerce by making it smarter, faster, and more customer-focused. With AI-powered tools, brands can offer personalized product recommendations, craft targeted messages, and design custom offers - all based on individual customer behavior and preferences. The result? Better engagement and higher conversion rates.
Automation, on the other hand, takes care of repetitive tasks like processing orders, updating inventory, and managing customer follow-ups. This frees up businesses to concentrate on bigger goals, like scaling and innovation. Meanwhile, AI-driven analytics deliver real-time insights into customer trends and campaign performance, enabling brands to fine-tune their strategies and adapt quickly to market shifts.
Together, AI and automation don't just improve customer experiences - they also streamline operations and help businesses scale their social commerce strategies, keeping them ahead in a rapidly changing landscape.
How can brands pick the right social commerce platform for their products?
Choosing the right social commerce platform starts with understanding your brand’s goals and where your audience spends their time. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook cater to different groups, so knowing your target demographic’s preferences is a crucial first step.
Once you’ve pinpointed the platform your audience prefers, take a closer look at its features. Does it offer robust shopping tools? Are the advertising options flexible enough to meet your needs? How well does it allow for personalization? These elements can play a big role in engaging customers and boosting your sales. Don’t forget to check how easily the platform integrates with your current ecommerce setup - smooth operations can save you a lot of headaches.
Finally, dig into the numbers. Look at engagement rates, conversion stats, and even case studies of brands that have succeeded on the platform. These insights can help you gauge the potential return on investment. Aligning your goals with a platform’s strengths can help you craft a streamlined shopping experience that delivers real results.
