Should Social Shopping Start at the Checkout?

I bought this t-shirt last night from
CafePress. It’s one I designed for the foundation I started to honor my brother, a retired firefighter who died unexpectedly in August at the age of 55. Though I have a free CafePress store for the foundation, I designed this one with the soul purpose of wearing it when I play for our office softball team (which wears green) so I can hopefully spread awareness for the cause.

After I checked out, a window popped up asking me if I’d like to tell all my Facebook friends about my purchase. Earlier in the day, I just happened to stumble upon this press release from ShopSocially, which announced the general availability of its social commerce suite Social Connect for online retailers.

Should social shopping start at the checkout? Let’s look at the pros and cons of social shopping.

Getting the buyer to share the wealth, so to speak, and be a brand ambassador at checkout seems like a good idea. You look on Facebook and there are a lot of people who want to tell all their friends what they’re getting.

CafePress, in theory, is a great candidate for social shopping at the checkout. Say you want to be the first person on the block to get a Charlie Sheen “WINNING” t-shirt and want to show it off to your friends. If you’re an attention-seeker, you’re probably going to share it on Facebook anyway. But if you’re not thinking Facebook at the time, and you get the directive to do so, then you may take advantage of the opportunity.

But if you bought tickets to the Charlie Sheen Torpedo of Truth Tour – and Social Connect was a part of the site you purchased your tickets from – you may look back at your Facebook wall and want to apologize for suggesting it to your friends! That might be a case, based on the reviews that came out of Detroit last week, when you just tell all your Facebook friends to save their money!

Back to CafePress. In this case, I did not want to share my purchase with my Facebook friends at checkout. Because the t-shirt is colored and printed on both sides, the cost is $26.99, plus $5 for the cheapest shipping. Even with the $14.40 I had in CafeCash, that’s one hell of an expensive t-shirt.

What’s worse, the Foundation isn’t getting a penny from those sales.

I’m sure CafePress wouldn’t want me to tell my Facebook friends what kind of a non-bargain I got from CafePress. And I’m sure if I did tell them, they’d fire back, “You spent HOW MUCH?”

How do I know, too, before I receive it, if this is going to be a great-looking and feeling t-shirt, or if I bought something crappy that’s going to be ruined once it goes through the washer and dryer?

So in this case, I’d want to have the social shopping opportunity either at the moment it reaches my mailbox (could they somehow sync the social shopping message to the delivery confirmation?) or some time after I wear the shirt (that would be tougher, since my washer and dryer aren’t connected to the Internet!)?

I like the concept of hitting the consumer after they checked out. The consumer is fully engaged, and the offer is still there to share in the social channel of choice. If you wait for the product to arrive home, the consumer may snap a photo and post that to Facebook, but it doesn’t connect back to the product page.

But unless I am 100% confident and proud of my purchase, I’m probably not going to share it at the checkout.