The Merchenta team have been busy over the past few weeks. Today we're pleased to announce the launch of Merchenta Social Commerce popup stores for Pia, a UK High Street jewellery retailer.

“It was simple to setup. Merchenta works with our existing product feeds so that the product selections are always up-to-date across our affiliate and social media channels where these MiniStores are used. Our Merchenta MiniStore on Facebook has helped us bring our ecommerce presence to a growing number of consumers through social sharing, quickly and easily." -  Zena Smith, Online Marketing Manager at Pia Jewellery

Pia  specialises in silver jewellery and fashion accessories. Based in Oxfordshire, Pia has a growing number of High Street stores across the UK.

We’re now able to offer our affiliates a variety of engaging, dynamic merchandising units that show-off our full product range alongside publishers’ content. All the MiniStores automatically update and optimise in real-time, so Merchenta saves us a lot of time, too.” - Zena Smith, Online Marketing Manager at Pia Jewellery

People are – by nature – social creatures. The steady rise of social media networks like Facebook is based in large part on the concept of ‘social sharing’. The ability to simply refer, recommend and highlight content to your network of ‘friends’ is a powerful aspect of viral marketing campaigns.

But how do consumers like to ‘share’? Some recent research from CMB throws light on demographic differences between US consumers.

On average, an overwhelming 82% of respondents typically shared via email, just 49% used Facebook and a paltry 4% of consumers used Twitter as their preferred sharing mechanism.

Whilst email is universally used for sharing, the 18-24 year olds are staunch Facebook sharers – over 76% use Facebook compared to 70% using email. At the other end of the spectrum, 97% of seniors prefer email over Facebook (24%).

So, what does this mean for online retailers seeking to boost their revenues through viral/social sharing strategies?

In a nutshell, email, Facebook and Twitter are the predominant online sharing mechanisms – and need to be supported as part of any social sharing eCommerce strategy. Merchenta provides in-built sharing mechanisms for Facebook, Twitter and – crucially - email.

Retailers benefit from social sharing with Merchenta’s single-click sharing. With just one click, consumers can share products with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and – pretty much anyone else – via email.