Affino Social Commerce - Smarter, Seamless Social Commerce

I’m sure many of you have heard of the Social Commerce definition of placing tills next to water coolers and water coolers next to tills. This is how the vast majority of Social Commerce is implemented - as a bolt-on or add-on, not necessarily central to the main consumer experience.

The purpose of Social Commerce - is to integrate social interactions with commercial transactions, so that when someone buys something - they can get advice, influence and a second opinion on their purchases - at the point of purchase. To truly do Social Commerce properly, the social element has to be fully ingrained within the retail experience - which is what Affino does. Affino is an all-in-one, seamless Social Commerce Hub - where all consumer interactions and transactions are handled simultaneously by the same system. Here the social commerce analogy is having water coolers within vending machines and vice versa - not as an aside or adjunt, but as a key element of the central experience.

Some years ago we worked with the designer jeans label Diesel on a number of website projects - at the time, we recommended having a webcam and monitor next to a communal store mirror - where shoppers could canvas opinions from users browsing the Diesel website. At that time there was no Facebook, and the technology was not up to much more than a one-way exchange of opinions. Just recently, Diesel put a similar idea into practice using a touchscreen monitor - where shoppers could login on their Facebook account, take snaps of their outfits and upload directly to their own User Profile. Such is the state of Internet technology today, that we can achieve all kinds of clever integrated interactions within the consumer experience - incorporating dynamic, intelligent recommendations, fully immersive media and multiple interactions.

In the visual above I have combined the latest in Acure touchscreen vending machine technology with Microsoft’s Kinect and Skype’s video call and text messaging - in order to illustrate point-of-sale social commerce. This is what Affino does on the web; our latest release will have the revived and updated ’Affino Messenger’ which gives you largely the Skype type interactive experience - with text messaging, video calling and file sharing functionality. Affino has several other types of clever in-built functionality; our Comments and Ratings system provides similar functionality to Disqus and Revoo, only totally seamlessly within the core experience. Everything in Affino is routed through User Profiles - which can be made public, and can display all the User’s preferences and likes and general website input and interactions - absolutely the best reference for purchasing recommendations and advice - in that you can fully cross-reference and validate that user’s recommendations, unlike on any other system.

We now also have the 3rd phase of Social Inegration active on this site, the ability to connect / authenticate and login, register or update account details via existing accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Affino is a genuinely different proposition for Social Commerce - it’s all about making a slicker, more seamless and more satisfying consumer experience.