Social Commerce Infographic on Retailers Selling Socially

Social media now drives major ecommerce growth, streamlining discovery-to-checkout via platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Shopify’s multi-channel tools and Amazon partnership. With soaring referral traffic, brands should test shoppable formats, iterate quickly, and track metrics from engagement to ROAS to convert social attention into measurable, scalable revenue.

Written by TheGenieLab

Mar 30, 2016

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How Social Media Fuels Ecommerce Growth and Social Commerce Sales

As social commerce continues to revolutionize ecommerce and digital commerce, retailers are discovering innovative ways to leverage social media marketing for increased sales conversion. Retailers keep asking the same question: is social media truly moving the sales needle, or is it just noise?

Have you considered how a shopper’s first touch on Facebook or a product tag on Instagram—shoppable content—can shorten the path to purchase? User-generated content on platforms like Instagram not only boosts brand visibility but also reinforces customer trust, leading to higher conversion rates and stronger target audience engagement.

When it comes to ecommerce and digital commerce, being social isn’t optional anymore—it’s a direct driver of awareness, target audience engagement, and revenue via social shopping and social media retailing. If your brand isn’t testing social commerce today, what opportunities are you leaving on the table?

Shopify was the first among ecommerce platforms to enable selling across leading social networks and deliver a multi‑channel solution for retailers.

With partnerships spanning Amazon, Wanelo, and Houzz, plus shoppable content and native shopping on Facebook, Shopify connects storefronts with where customers scroll and shop through social shopping.

More than 25% of Shopify merchants actively sell through social media, signaling how integrated social retail has become.

The Facebook partnership that lets shoppers buy socially shared products directly from brand pages further positions Shopify as a catalyst for seamless social buying.

Midway through last year, Amazon named Shopify its preferred platform for retailers building and managing online stores, enabling Shopify businesses to use Amazon’s payment system and services; as Amazon Webstore wound down, merchants maintained momentum by leveraging Shopify technology—a simpler path from discovery to checkout across ecommerce, digital commerce, and social channels that lifts sales conversion.

Social media is now driving larger gains in retail traffic than any other online source. Its share of e‑commerce referrals grew nearly 200% between the first quarters of 2014 and 2015, underscoring how discovery, conversation, and sales conversion increasingly happen in the same feed. Are your offers and creative aligned to social browsing behavior?

This is only the beginning of unlocking social commerce and social shopping. Snapchat, WeChat, and WhatsApp are expanding shopping features alongside Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. Start small and iterate: test one platform at a time, align socially curated collections to the channel’s target audience, and trial formats: shoppable content, short video, live demos, and user‑generated content. Compare creative angles and optimize checkout. If a test underperforms, what variable will you change next?

Adopt an agile social media marketing mindset. Run short, time‑boxed experiments, document learnings, and reallocate budget toward winning ads, audiences, and placements. Define success upfront with metrics: click‑through rate, target audience engagement, conversion rate, average order value, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and referral share from social—tracked with analytics tools for social media. Are you maximizing your brand’s potential in social commerce? Explore the opportunities for enhanced customer engagement and wider reach through targeted social media campaigns.