As the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide in early 2020 and hampered brick-and-mortar businesses, online social retail emerged as a refreshing breakthrough.

Social commerce blends ecommerce and social media best practices as an exciting, lucrative evolution in retail marketing.

We look at global social commerce trends, China’s roaring social ecommerce market and what U.S. retailers can learn from successful market leaders.

A glimpse at why global social commerce is so powerful

Facebook’s 2020 launch of Instagram Shops directly aims at Amazon by blending ecommerce with the world’s biggest social media platform. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global social commerce market is estimated to increase at a soaring rate of 31.4%. Social commerce will continue to grow in 2021 as shoppers stick with digital habits and as both ecommerce and traditional retailers quickly adapt to the post-COVID-19 environment.

Why should your brand care about social commerce? Integrating ecommerce with social media is powerful. It enables consumers to search brands via social content and explore products they usually would not look for on an ecommerce platform. Social commerce applies to diverse shopping scenarios, ranging from product search, influencers and mobile pay. In addition, China’s wildly popular social media platform WeChat is heavily investing its ecommerce ambitions with the booming social commerce mini-program that attracts global brands ranging from Sephora and Nike to Gucci and Armani. WeChat mini-programs are lightweight sub-apps that brands use to gain speed to market and seamlessly sell within the bigger WeChat platform.

Social media platforms offer social features for brands and retailers to create interactive, shareable and immersive campaigns that help new product launches go viral. For instance, group-buying deals, online mini-games and interactive challenges can enrich the customer experience.