How much time do you spend on your mobile device daily? Let’s speak honestly, whether you are in bed, at work, on a bus or train, your eyes are almost constantly fixed on your gadget’s screen. True? According to the global web index, the average time spent per day using mobile internet is about 3 hours 14 minutes worldwide, i.e. 50 days a year! And at least half of this time is spent on social media apps. And this share continues growing.
This trend affects our shopping habits as well resulting in the rise of what is commonly called social commerce. Consumers use social media to learn about products and brands and find inspiration. They need to discuss their purchases, they like to have some reviews from other customers or give them advice based on their own experience. Here at Joom we understand this need like no one else, we see the line between social media and e-commerce becoming blurred and believe the future of e-commerce is definitely social and personalized. Thus, we have created and are developing our own social network built right into the marketplace platform to make our users’ experience unique. We’ll tell why it was a good idea.
Joom social network: raison d’être
We launched Joom social network almost two years ago when we realized that it was important for business — our customers needed something greater than just a marketplace, they needed a place where they could relax, look at beautiful pics, get inspired by bloggers’ publications, share their opinion. Something that will create a feeling of belonging. And we let them get inside and create this place: discuss everything they want, share experiences, be involved in communication so that they were willing to return.
In fact, for Joom as a business, this social network is serving two main goals: user retention and creation of additional value of the application. For example, making it also a social platform helps to fill this fundamental human need of community. Besides, we offer our users the possibility of some kind of self-fulfillment. Here, any person can become a blogger, gain his/her moment of glory and feel somehow more needed and more important.
Sure, we are not alone in exploiting the social potential of e-commerce. Even the most popular social network, Instagram, has been very intensively integrating its click-to-shop feature for the past two years. This suggests that e-commerce in general and all purchases over the next three-five years will probably become social. What is our advantage and why will it be easier for us? We made it convenient for users to buy without leaving the platform at any moment. Everything is at one place. You read the post, you click on a button — and this good is in your cart. We already have all personal data (your phone number, address, email etc.), so the purchase flow is much shorter than anywhere else. And now we are actively working on attracting more and more cool brands that are interesting to users.
What is special about our social network?
Anyone can become a blogger here. That’s not your previous experience that matters, but your desire to create quality content and the ability to work on it. And we are really investing much time and effort in educating our users. We prepare newsletters and detailed guides to help people to improve the content. We motivate our users to take beautiful photos and write full reviews. Why are we doing this? Because it allows them to get followers faster.
What does it mean to become a blogger on Joom?
When somebody sends us a demand to become a blogger, we ask this person to complete some simple test task. We do not refuse immediately if it’s not done breathtakingly well. We give some recommendations on composition, colors, visual storytelling that may help the user to succeed. If you are persistent enough and really put your energy into it, if you are willing and able to improve the review, we’ll reward you with the blogger status. This allows you to appear more often in featured reviews and to get into newsfeed. We recommend users to follow even new-coming bloggers so your only task is to make regular and beautiful content.
Utility for bloggers and retailers
In addition to extra promotion, our bloggers become a part of a Revenue Share program. This means that they have a 10% cashback that they receive in extra points from any purchase inspired by their review. Apart from this, we’ve developed a program called “Bloggers Exchange” available for most successful bloggers. How does it work? The largest sellers and brands on the platform choose goods they would like to promote. A blogger can leave a request for promotion. If the announcer is happy with the blogger’s content and style, he approves this request and sends the goods for a review at his own expense. We open access to the Exchange to our users and bloggers once they have at least 5 thousand followers.
Why do we keep this entry barrier? Because we want to be sure that our users are really interested in developing the blog, that they are not there for a fraud — just to pick up some goods and simply disappear. This is also a kind of self-test for the bloggers: during this period they could realize whether they are really ready to invest their time and efforts into content creation.
We receive 3 to 5 thousand applications daily from sellers who need honest and elaborate reviews on their products. A blogger can respond to whatever he wants. Then the seller selects one particular blogger and sends him a product for review. The blogger receives it, tests it and writes his honest opinion. Its influence can hardly be overestimated. The very first review from an influencer increases conversion by 187%, while a regular review from a user increases it by only 28%. The second blogger’s review will result in a 124% increase against 23% brought by ordinary users.
Ethics and Responsibility
Let’s say it again: we need honest reviews and stand for ethics on our platform. Even if bloggers are not happy with their experience, we ask them to tell us what’s gone wrong and are grateful for constructive criticism. That helps us to get better and make it easier for customers to make choices on our platform.
In general it takes a couple of months for bloggers to get 3–4 thousand followers. They grow their audience without any cheating (like giveaways and so on), but just with relevant content.
Bloggers can receive up to 100 products per month for free. We think it’s barely possible to write more great reviews in a month as our bloggers are not professionals. They have another permanent job and treat blogging as a pleasant hobby with some nice extras like bonuses, promos and free goods from sellers.
Joom social network is also a place where we instill in users responsibility and respect for others. We know that communication on social networks often involves some unpleasant comments or even hate. We are all human and our bloggers can also be in a bad mood or just lose their temper for a moment and probably respond in a rude manner to some comments. We struggle against it. We are trying to inspire our users to communicate respectfully within the social network. We encourage people to complain about comments that offend, hurt or insult them. We urge bloggers to periodically post that communicating within social networks should, above all, be fun.
So our platform becomes this place where people come to relax and to have some fun, where you can gather together people with similar interests and as a result build a real community, where communication often goes beyond simple discussion of purchases like in any other social network. This is one of the aspects that makes Joom so special and makes people return.
