As more consumers in Malaysia turn to social media for shopping, it's becoming increasingly crucial for businesses to embrace social commerce. With 27 million social media users in Malaysia by 2025, businesses that ignore this trend risk falling behind their competitors.

Despite how powerful social commerce can be for most businesses, the biggest challenge when entering this field is the user’s behavior on social media. A study conducted by Microsoft in 2015 revealed that the average attention span of a person using social media is only 8 seconds. This is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish.

This raises a question - how can businesses overcome this obstacle when trying to attract and convert leads on social platforms? In this article, we’ll explore four key tips that businesses in Malaysia can consider to maximize social commerce potential and drive revenue growth. Whether new to social commerce or looking to improve your existing sales strategy, these tips will help you stay ahead.

1. Provide quality content

People on social media have a short attention span, therefore businesses need to make sure that the message is clear and relevant to the target audience. Relevance is what determines the quality of the content.

A report by GlobalWebIndex found that 60% of internet users in Malaysia follow brands’ accounts on social media if they find the content relevant to them. This addresses the need for businesses to provide quality content on social media to get customers’ attention and compete in the social commerce market.

So how can this be achieved? Businesses must use customer data to determine their preferences. By knowing who your customers are, you can create relevant content based on their persona, providing them with a value they resonate with.

What distinguishes social commerce from e-commerce and mobile commerce is the connection between the brand and the customer. Posting on social media is not just about selling products or getting your brand name in front of customers, but it is a process of building connections and loyalty with clients.

2. Be consistent

Besides publishing quality content on social media, consistency is key. Brands must frequently engage with their followers to keep their attention and interest. This means posting content regularly and responding to comments and messages promptly. Many businesses make the mistake of only setting up a shop on social media and expecting instant results.

To harness the true power of social commerce, businesses must have a consistent and strategic plan for social content that encourages users toward the intention of purchasing.

Remember that the success of social commerce is not an overnight phenomenon. By staying committed to your social commerce plan, providing value to your followers, and exercising patience, businesses can build a loyal following, increase visibility, and drive sales over time.

3. Make use of data

Data is a powerful tool for businesses looking to maximize their social commerce strategy. Businesses can leverage those customer data of shopping behaviors, preferences, and needs to adjust their social commerce strategy to the fullest potential.

Social media analytics

Engagement rates, post reach, and click-through rates help brands understand what customers resonate with. This helps the social media and marketing teams better optimize the brands’ social commerce strategy.

Social commerce data can be very important for businesses. It provides insights and patterns on customer shopping behavior and preference. For instance, if you find that most of your customers' preferred devices when shopping on your social commerce is mobile devices, this insight can be a great asset to elevate your m-commerce strategy. Hence, adopting mobile commerce into your plan is a logical next step.

Check out Mobile Commerce 101: An Easy Guide for Malaysian Merchants to learn how to leverage these insights and optimize your business for mobile.

Use social listening tools

Social listening tools help businesses check mentions of the brand, relevant keywords, and direct feedback through tags and direct messages. Such information will help brands determine the best ways to improve their social commerce strategy based on customers' insights.

Social listening tools offer valuable insights to improve social commerce strategies. Merchants can create campaigns that resonate with their target audience by tracking trends and pain points that customers discuss on social media. Additionally, monitoring brand reputation enables quick response to negative feedback and improves the brand image, which can foster customer trust and loyalty.

Check out Everything Personalized to understand how to create the most personalized shopping experiences for your customers.

4. Streamline your checkout

Besides engaging content, offering a quick and easy checkout process can significantly reduce customer distraction and diminish the chances of people abandoning their shopping carts.

A lengthy and complex checkout process has a negative impact on your social commerce plan. Studies reveal a 70% average online shopping cart abandonment rate, mainly due to checkout complexity. For instance, users may abandon checkout when they need to switch between applications to make their payment or when they have to walk away to fetch their wallet to get payment details from their credit card.

Hence, streamlining your checkout process can significantly benefit your social commerce strategy. Businesses must have a payment solution that is fast and quick, allowing customers to make purchases conveniently with minimum effort.

Have a look at Payment Gateway 101 to learn more about what a payment gateway is and how to choose a suitable payment gateway for your business.

There are several options brands can opt for to streamline their checkout process.

Opn Payments offers Payment Links, a feature that allows merchants to create customizable payment links that can be easily shared via any communication channel (email, SMS, chat, etc.). This simplifies the process of requesting and accepting payments.

Another interesting option that can help streamline checkout for customers is the “card-on-file” or “one-click payment” solution. Behind the scenes, this feature is powered by tokenization. On the consumer-facing front, this enables users to save their card details at a store they frequently shop with, and removes the need for them to fill out card information every time they make a purchase.

Trusted by over 22,000 businesses across Asia and the U.S., Opn Payments offer businesses secure and seamless online payment services. For brands with a social commerce strategy, Opn can help process payments without complex integration or expensive costs. We are the payments engine that works to support brands behind the scenes, making sure that businesses can provide the most seamless and secure checkout experience for customers.

The team is available to support you with any questions about payments and solution design. Contact us today and let us help to boost your business to the next level.