White paper addresses social media for retail

MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — Guidance has published a new white paper offering retailers insight into identifying which Web 2.0 and social technologies will keep customers coming back to their Web sites and spending money — and telling their friends to do the same.

"Social Commerce: The Essential Guide to Combining eCommerce + Social Networking" focuses the discussion on social capabilities integrated into e-commerce sites — bringing the social to the commerce — rather than the other way around, where online retailers target consumers on social networking sites. Some of those social and Web 2.0 features include user-generated product reviews, forums through which people can talk to each other, video product demonstrations and many others.

Throughout the paper, Guidance retail and social commerce specialists discuss what's possible and what's actually happening in social commerce on retail Web sites today, what consumers expect from the online shopping experience, where those expectations come from and how retailers can and should respond.