One of the growing trends in ecommerce is social shopping. Social shopping is a way for consumers to “shop together” by sharing products, tips, bookmarks and reviews. Social shopping goes beyond Web sites that offer comparison shopping and actually moves into a dynamic shopping experience that consumers can share with others, all from the comfort of their homes. eBay Neighborhoods is an example of social shopping, as is kaboodle. (Get Elastic has a very good list of social shopping Web sites to get you started.)

But until now, most social shopping has been done through bookmarks and bookmarklets and other similar tools. Not any more. Sosign Interactive, a Canada-based company, aims to help etailers make social shopping a truly social experience with Clavardon. Ecommerce-guide.com offers this explanation of the new social shopping application:

The main features include: co-browsing, co-scrolling, co-highlighting and chat. Clavardon also provides a way for visitors to meet friends by e-mail and invite other visitors to co-browse. (The name of the tool comes from the French Clavarder, to chat.)

This means that online shoppers interested in social shopping can do so together. It’s the online equivalent of a trip to the mall with your friends. Consumers can browse products together and talk about them, even consulting with each other before making a purchase decision.

Integration onto ecommerce Web sites is supposed to be simple, and Sosign has packages that range from free to monthly subscriptions. It’s an interesting idea. Consumers are always interested in what others think about products (that’s why online customer product reviews are so popular), and this interactive social shopping experience may provide a user-friendly way for consumers to make connections with others online.

Tags: social shopping, ecommerce, ecommerce businesses, ecommerce trends,
ecommerce ecommerce, Get Elastic, social shopping bookmarks