Predictions that social commerce and personalized shopping were likely to become the next trends in ecommerce might already be coming true. Pinterest, a social bookmarking site, grew by nearly 429 percent between September and December of 2011. The website uses an algorithm to generate personalized product recommendations for customers. Users post items they like to a public message board, which can drive traffic to merchants' web pages.
"Personalization was really important in enabling Amazon to differentiate itself and grow in the past ten years," David Selinger, CEO and co-founder of RichRelevence told Tech Crunch. "Personalization will be the differentiating factor in new e-commerce and digital commerce going forward, especially for multichannel retailers and new entrants online."
Merchants who want to expand their business through online retail can move forward using social commerce sites to create a more personalized shopping experience. When customers find products that are recommended just for them through Pinterest, they can follow links to off-site stores where they can purchase products directly from vendors.
Sites optimized for convenient transactions will be able to perform simple and secure online payment processing. Multi-channel retailers who want to capitalize on this trend should also invest in fraud management services to ensure that online stores are PCI compliant to avoid fees and penalties.
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