How to drive sales and customer engagement with social shopping

Social shopping is not just a trend. Your potential customers are probably watching a founder demo a jacket on TikTok Live or hunting for vintage finds through Instagram or Pinterest boards that feel more like editorial than advertising.

The purchase consideration and the purchase itself are now happening in the same scroll. It's called social commerce or social shopping, and it's gaining retail market share as you're reading this. Maintaining a strong social media presence is essential for brands to capture this attention.

The opportunity is clear, but it requires some planning. This guide covers what it takes to build a social shopping strategy:

• Social media shopping tactics that online retailers should prioritize to boost sales
• A breakdown of the most popular social shopping networks
• The social commerce trends reshaping the space
• How to set up the product data infrastructure needed for implementing social shopping

Keep reading to find out how you can turn scrolls into sales.

Key takeaways

• Social commerce now accounts for 15.2% of global eCommerce
• 46% of resale discovery now happens outside dedicated resale platforms through social feeds and creators on mobile devices, and in-person browsing
• 43% of secondhand shoppers have purchased via social commerce or livestream formats
• Consumer influence and peer reviews generate the highest positive sentiment among shoppers
• In-app checkout removes the single biggest drop-off point in social purchase journeys: the redirect to an external site
• Structured product data is the foundation of a seamless online shopping experience; tags, catalogs, and dynamic ads all depend on it being accurate and complete

Social shopping in 2026: An overview

Social shopping refers to purchasing products directly through social media platforms, integrating the social interaction of these platforms with the convenience of online shopping. It accounted for 15.2% of total global eCommerce in 2026, with social commerce sales forecast to reach nearly $586 billion, up 16.5% year-over-year. Leading the adoption are China, Thailand, India, Peru, and Colombia, where roughly nine in ten internet users made purchases through social networks in 2024. This trend is a core component of modern social media marketing.

According to McKinsey & Company's State of Fashion 2026 report, shopping via livestreams and social media apps is growing significantly in Asia, with the trend gaining traction in Europe and the U.S. In China and India specifically, about two-thirds of consumers engaged in live shopping events in 2025. Western markets are still maturing, but the trajectory is pretty clear already.

Social shopping is also reshaping secondhand discovery in ways that matter for any fashion brand with a resale or circular strategy. ThredUp's 2026 Resale Report found that 46% of resale discovery now happens outside dedicated resale platforms, through feeds on social shopping sites, creators, and in-person browsing. And 43% of secondhand shoppers have purchased via social commerce or livestream formats. Among Gen Z and Millennials, that adoption rate is nearly triple that of older generations.

Social shopping isn't new, but what's changed is where the friction appears in the buying process. For years, social commerce meant clicking a tagged product in a post and getting redirected to a product page to complete the purchase. That redirect is where brands were losing conversions, as it disrupts the online shopping experience and adds extra checkout steps to the process. Consequently, shoppers who discovered something in a feed rarely completed the purchase once they left the app.

That gap is now closing with in-app checkout on Meta, TikTok Shop, and Pinterest, which has moved the entire purchase journey — discovery, consideration, and transaction — inside the platform. Now, the customer never has to leave an app to check out.

4 ways to drive revenue with social shopping platforms

If you're not in on it yet and don't know where to start, here are four strategies you can use with key social shopping tools and platforms.

1. In-app checkout and frictionless conversion

Redirecting a shopper from Instagram to a product page, then to a cart, then to a checkout screen is a sequence of unnecessary hurdles. Each step loses people who were ready to buy.

According to the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, around 75% of online shoppers abandon their carts at the final stage of purchase. The culprit is usually a goal impediment — a disruption that breaks the shopper's momentum right before they buy.

In-app checkout removes that sequence entirely. Meta's checkout, TikTok Shop, and Pinterest's direct purchase integrations let shoppers go from discovery to payment confirmation without ever leaving the platform.

For this to work, your product catalog needs to be clean, structured, and synced in real time. Pricing, inventory, and variant availability all need to be accurate at the moment a shopper decides to buy. An "add to cart" that returns an out-of-stock error is its own form of goal impediment, stopping sales even more effectively than a redirect does.

2. Shoppable content across every touchpoint

Shoppable content turns passive browsing into an active purchase path. Tagged products in feed posts, shoppable video overlays, product stickers in Stories and Reels, and buyable Pins on Pinterest all create low-friction entry points to your catalog from content a shopper was already engaging with.

The key is making sure your product data is complete enough to populate these formats correctly. A tagged product with a missing image, an incorrect price, or a vague title performs far worse than one with rich, accurate data.

For brands running dynamic product ads on Meta or TikTok, the same principle applies. Dynamic ads pull directly from your catalog, so the quality of the underlying product data determines the quality of every ad unit generated.

3. Live shopping formats that build urgency and community

The McKinsey State of Fashion 2026 report identifies live commerce as one of the defining shifts in how categories like fashion are sold in Asia, and brands operating in Western markets are starting to see the same engagement dynamics.

Facebook Live remains the leading live commerce platform in the U.S. by revenue, but TikTok Live is growing faster, particularly with younger audiences who treat it as entertainment first and shopping second.

Unlike static content, live commerce creates real-time social pressure. Brands can host live shopping events to leverage scarcity and build community. When a host shows a limited-edition colorway and 200 people are watching the same stream, scarcity and demand become visible.

Before you start selling on social media channels, there are two big boxes you need to tick:

• Products you feature during a stream need to be immediately purchasable, either through in-app checkout or a link that goes directly to the right product page, not your homepage
• You need to manage inventory in real time so you're not selling stock you don't have

Miss either one, and the sale falls through.

4. Social proof with user-generated content (UGC) and influencer marketing

Research analyzing nearly 400,000 Reddit posts noted that peer reviews and online communities create stronger purchase pressure than expert voices, often outweighing brand-led messaging entirely.

For brands running Creatives at scale, Channable's dynamic image editor can help generate on-brand product visuals that integrate well alongside UGC in paid social placements.

Where to focus social commerce efforts: A platform-by-platform breakdown

Not every platform works the same way for your audience or for your product category. A 2025 survey of more than 1,500 consumers by Constructor and Shopify found that social shopping is now universal, but preferred platforms vary by generation.

Getting your social media platform mix right starts with knowing which generation is buying what you sell. Let's explore this further.

1. Meta

Instagram (38%) and Facebook (37%) are the two largest social discovery sources across all generations, according to the Constructor/Shopify survey. Among Gen X and Boomers specifically, 38% and 30%, respectively, buy directly through Facebook.

MikMak's State of Social Commerce Report found that Instagram shoppers had the highest average annual purchase intent value of any platform at $158, with Facebook second at $133. For fashion brands selling at mid-to-premium price points, that spending power matters.

Facebook and Instagram together accounted for 55.8% and 32.5% of all social commerce purchase intent clicks. Facebook Live also drives the most live commerce revenue in the U.S., making it the strongest starting point for brands testing shoppable formats.

For catalog-based advertising, Meta's dynamic product ads pull directly from your Facebook product feed, making feed quality the single biggest lever on ad relevance and performance.

Strong fit for: Brands with large catalogs, retargeting-heavy strategies, and audiences in the 25–45+ demographic.

2. TikTok

TikTok's trajectory in social commerce is unlike any platform before it. The MikMak data shows it jumped from 7th to 3rd in social commerce traffic share in a single year. The Constructor/Shopify survey tells us 58% of shoppers aged 18–29 report discovering and buying products directly via TikTok.

TikTok Shop allows brands to list products directly, tag items in videos, run shoppable livestreams, and let affiliate creators sell on their behalf through the platform's creator marketplace. The content format rewards authenticity over production value.

The platform skews Gen Z and younger Millennials. If that's your core buyer, TikTok is where the discovery starts. For more on TikTok Shop's commerce mechanics, see Channable's TikTok Shop guide.

Strong fit for: Brands targeting Gen Z and younger Millennials, products with a strong visual or narrative angle, and teams willing to invest in creator partnerships.

3. Pinterest

Pinterest is where intent lives. Users actively search for style ideas, outfit inspiration, and home aesthetics, which means purchase intent is higher at the point of discovery than on platforms where shopping is passive. The platform's shoppable Pins connect directly to product pages, and its visual search tool lets social media users find products by photographing items they already own or see out and about.

The MikMak basket size data found that Pinterest shoppers averaged 3.52 items per basket — the highest of any platform tracked. Shoppers arrive with a project in mind, creating genuine opportunities for complementary product discovery and increased order values.

For fashion brands with a resale or secondhand angle, Pinterest's community is particularly receptive. ThredUp's data shows resale discovery increasingly happening through social feeds and creator content rather than platform search, and Pinterest's curation-heavy environment is well-suited to that shift.

Channable's Pinterest integration supports catalog-based marketing campaigns and product tag management.

Strong fit for: Lifestyle and fashion brands, brands with strong visual assets, and those with resale or sustainable fashion positioning.

4. Snapchat

Snapchat reaches an audience that spends significant time in the app but is often underserved by brands focused entirely on Meta and TikTok. Its shopping tools — Dynamic Ads, Shoppable AR lenses, and product catalog integration — give it genuine differentiators. The standout is AR try-on, which lets users virtually try on shoes, glasses, and accessories, reducing return rates and increasing purchase confidence.

MikMak's data shows that Snapchat shoppers had an average annual purchase intent value of just $21, the lowest of any platform tracked.

That makes Snapchat less useful as a direct revenue driver and more valuable as an upper-funnel awareness channel, particularly for reaching under-25 target audiences with high future lifetime value. The audience's receptiveness to limited-time, exclusive-feeling offers matches the platform's ephemeral content format well.

Strong fit for: Brands with strong product visualization opportunities (footwear, eyewear, accessories) and those building awareness with under-25 audiences.

How Channable supports social shopping at scale

Getting social shopping to work operationally hinges on product data that's accurate, complete, and formatted correctly for every platform you're selling on. That's harder to maintain than it sounds when you're managing hundreds of SKUs across Meta, TikTok Shop, Pinterest, and Snapchat simultaneously.

With Channable's product feed management tool, you import your catalog once and use rules to adapt it for each social channel's specific requirements. Titles, descriptions, image formats, category mappings, and variant-level availability all get handled per-channel from a single source. When inventory changes or prices update, those changes propagate across every platform automatically.

For paid social specifically, Channable supports catalog-based dynamic ad campaigns on Meta and Instagram, with feed rules that keep ad creative aligned with what's actually in stock and correctly priced. Combined with Channable's dynamic image editor, you can generate on-brand product visuals at scale directly from your feed — useful for brands running high-volume dynamic ad campaigns across multiple social platforms.

If you're selling on social, Channable makes sure your product data is ready for it.

Try Channable for free

Sources

• Statista: Social Commerce Share Worldwide
• McKinsey & Company: The State of Fashion 2026
• ThredUp: 2026 Resale Report
• Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services: "Cart abandonment and goal impediment in online shopping"
• Aydin, G. et al.: "What consumers really think about sustainable fashion: A computational analysis of online discussions," Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 2026
• Constructor & Shopify: 2025 State of Ecommerce
• MikMak: State of Social Commerce Report 2023