There’s no topic that’s quite had the staying power in our circles as social commerce. So, when we caught this headline in Business of Fashion earlier this week, we clicked through to read.
In a no-so positive update on Instagram Checkout, BoF explored the question of why Instagram Checkout isn’t taking off.
In it, there’s this quote from Silvia Avanzi, founder and designer of Brooklyn-based shoe brand Gray Matters:
“It’s Instagram, so you trust them … but shopping on social media isn’t so easy or straightforward.”
Catch that word? Easy?
The promise of Instagram Checkout—and social commerce more broadly—was that it eliminates friction. That we’re time-starved, attention-starved, and want to shop where they spend their time. That eliminating the friction of clicking to a brand’s site means it’s easier for us to buy stuff.
Except that’s a lie.
Or, at the least, an omission truth. Commerce has long been obsessed with removing friction in the name of making it easier to buy, but somewhere along the way in ecomm we equated the two. Doing that ignores the fundamental principles of why we shop in the first place: We have a want or need.
Be it emotional, rational, or a combination of both, that’s it. Buying is the transactional act of filling the want, but shopping is considering whether to fill it—and, if filled—when and what to fill it with.
Why’s this important for CPG brands (or any brands, really)?
BJ Fogg, a behavioral scientist at Stanford and author of Tiny Habits, is well-known for his B=MAP equation and Behavioral Wave model.
From Fogg in reference to B=MAP:
“Behavior (B) happens when Motivation (M), Ability (A), and a Prompt (P) come together at the same moment."
In his wave model, he further expands on this idea to show that, when motivation is high, ability and prompts can be low. But when motivation is low, ability and prompts need to be high.
In other words, we’ll deal with friction when we really want (or need) something.
When we shop, we have to first draw on our memory for a specific set of brands and, after that, validate whether any of them will fill our want. Sometimes, that validation takes time; sometimes, it takes information; sometimes, it takes prompts.
All of it can be plotted on Fogg’s wave model.
Add the BoF article to this worthwhile report on CX and “good friction” from Future Commerce, and we were reminded of all this this week.
The art of ecomm isn’t reducing friction. It’s knowing whether the friction you’re removing is making it easier to buy.
As that balance isn’t the same for every brand or every consumer, that’s a difficult art to master.
Remove too much friction, and you remove a lot of those prompts, a lot of the information, and a lot of the opportunities for focused dwell time. In theory, that sounds good.
Except having the right amount of those things makes it easier for us to buy: Having one less button to click is nothing compared to having the confidence to click it to begin with.
The hard part of commerce, then, isn’t removing friction. It’s making it easier to buy.