Latest / Social Media Marketing with Fexingo: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Platform Strategy / Why Brands Are Adopting Social Commerce Checkout
Transcript
- Lucas: So earlier this week I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw a post from a smaller skincare brand I follow. Normally I'd tap the link in bio, get redirected to their site, add to cart, go through checkout — the usual. But this time there was this little 'View Shop' button right below the image, and when I tapped it, I could buy a moisturizer without ever leaving the app. Luna: Right — that's Instagram Checkout. It's been around for a few years now, but I feel like we're finally seeing brands actually lean into it in a serious way. Lucas: Exactly. And not just Instagram — TikTok Shop, Pinterest with Buyable Pins, even YouTube is testing shopping features. The idea is native checkout: the user completes the purchase inside the platform. No redirect. No new tab. No typing in credit card info because it's already saved. Luna: And that's huge for conversion rates. I've seen data that cart abandonment can drop by as much as twenty percent when you remove that redirect step. Lucas: Yeah, the friction reduction is real. But here's the trade-off that I think a lot of brands don't fully weigh: you're giving the platform a cut of every transaction. For Instagram Checkout, it's typically around a two to three percent revenue share. On TikTok Shop, the fees can be structured differently — sometimes a flat fee plus a percentage. And you're also handing over customer data. The platform owns the transaction data, not you. Luna: So the brand loses that direct relationship with the customer's purchase behavior. That's why you see a brand like Chanel — they don't do checkout on social at all. They want that first-party data. Lucas: Chanel is a perfect example. They're very protective of their customer experience and their data. They'd rather you come to their site, create an account, and let them build a profile. But then you look at a brand like Glossier — they've been all-in on social commerce. They were one of the early adopters of Instagram Checkout. And their whole model is built on that social-first discovery. Luna: And Glossier's customer base skews younger, right? Gen Z and younger millennials who are already comfortable with in-app purchases. They don't see it as a loss of control — they see it as convenience. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the tension. For DTC brands that already live on social, native checkout might be a net positive. But for heritage brands or anyone who's invested in building their own e-commerce infrastructure, it's a harder sell. You're essentially paying a toll to use someone else's highway. Luna: Let's talk numbers. Do we have a sense of how big this market actually is right now? Lucas: Sure. TikTok Shop alone was projected to hit around thirty-eight billion dollars in US gross merchandise value in 2025. That's up from basically zero a few years ago. Instagram Checkout is harder to isolate because Meta doesn't break it out, but social commerce overall in the US was expected to pass a hundred billion in 2025. It's still a fraction of total e-commerce, but it's growing fast. Luna: So for a brand deciding whether to enable native checkout, what's the single biggest factor they should consider? Lucas: I'd say it's whether their product is an impulse buy or a considered purchase. If it's something low-priced, visually driven, and doesn't require much research — like a lip balm, a phone case, a snack — native checkout works great. But if you're selling a thousand-dollar laptop or a financial product, you probably want the customer on your own site where you can upsell, cross-sell, and capture their info. Luna: And that's where some brands are doing a hybrid approach. They'll use the native checkout for the first purchase, but then retarget those customers on social and try to drive them to the owned site for the second purchase. Lucas: Right, that's smart. You get the conversion benefit on the first sale, and then you use lookalike audiences and retargeting to pull them into your ecosystem. But here's the thing — the platform still has the transaction data. So you're relying on the platform's ad tools to do that retargeting, which means you're paying again. It's a fee-on-fee model. Luna: And those fees add up. If you're a small brand with thin margins, a two to three percent revenue share plus ad spend to retarget — you could be giving up five to seven percent of revenue just to use the platform's rails. Lucas: Which is why some brands are experimenting with a middle ground: they use the platform's shop feature but with a link-out to their own checkout. That way they avoid the revenue share, but they still get the product tagging and discovery. The downside is the customer has to re-enter their info, so cart abandonment goes back up. Luna: There's no perfect solution. It's really about what trade-offs you're willing to make. Lucas: If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used — like a change to your own social strategy or even just a new way of thinking about a platform — and you've wanted to support the show, you can buy us a coffee. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a simple way to keep this thing ad-free and independent. Luna: Yeah, it's a nice way to say 'this was useful' without any strings. We really appreciate that. Lucas: Okay, back to the trade-offs. One area I think is really under-discussed is how native checkout affects brand loyalty. If the customer buys through Instagram, does that customer feel loyal to the brand or to the platform? Luna: That's a great question. I've seen research that says when a purchase happens entirely inside a platform, the platform gets the credit for the seamless experience, not the brand. The brand becomes almost a commodity. Lucas: Exactly. And that's dangerous long-term. If a competitor shows up with a similar product and a slightly better price, the customer can switch with one tap because they never formed a direct relationship. They bought from the platform, not from you. Luna: So how do brands combat that? I've seen some try to insert a post-purchase email capture within the platform. Like, after the sale, they send a message saying 'create an account on our site for exclusive offers.' But that's not always allowed by the platform's terms. Lucas: Right, some platforms forbid you from trying to pull the customer off-platform after a sale. You have to play by their rules. So the challenge is to build loyalty while staying inside the walled garden. One tactic is to use the platform's own messaging tools to provide exceptional customer service. If someone buys your product and you follow up personally via Instagram DM, that creates a human connection that's hard for a competitor to replicate. Luna: That's a good point. The platform gives you tools for engagement — Stories, Lives, DMs — and those can be loyalty builders. It's not just about the checkout button. Lucas: Let's look at a concrete example. There's a brand called Mented Cosmetics — they make nude lipsticks for women of color. They were early on Instagram Checkout and they leaned heavily into the platform's native tools. They used shoppable posts, but they also used Stories to show real customers wearing their products, and they'd reply to comments personally. They built a community. Luna: And that community became their moat. Even if a competitor appeared, the trust and relationship with Mented was stronger than the convenience of a one-click checkout. Lucas: Exactly. So the brands that win with native checkout are the ones that use it as part of a broader relationship strategy, not just a conversion tool. They combine the friction-free purchase with genuine interaction. Luna: What about the platforms themselves? Are they evolving these features? I know TikTok Shop now offers a 'Shopify integration' that lets brands sync their inventory automatically. Lucas: Yeah, Shopify has been a key partner. They have a TikTok channel integration that lets you tag products in posts and even run shoppable ads. And they handle the checkout either through Shopify's native checkout or through TikTok's — the brand can choose. That flexibility is important because it lets brands test which approach works better for their specific customers. Luna: And I've seen Pinterest testing a 'Checkout on Pinterest' option that uses Stripe. They're trying to become a shopping destination, not just an inspiration board. Lucas: The platforms all want a piece of the transaction. And it's not just about the revenue share — it's about the data. Every purchase gives them insight into buying behavior, which makes their ad targeting more valuable. They can sell that targeting to other brands. So the checkout is really a data capture mechanism disguised as a convenience feature. Luna: That's the cynical take, but it's also true. So as a brand, you have to ask: am I willing to pay for that data to be captured by the platform, or do I want to invest in capturing it myself? Lucas: And that's the core strategic question. I think for 2026 and beyond, we'll see more brands adopt a tiered approach. For low-consideration, repeat-purchase items — native checkout. For high-ticket or complex products — link to owned site. And for everything in between, they'll test and measure. Luna: It's still early days. We're only a few years into this shift, and the platforms keep changing the rules. I'm curious to see how it evolves. Lucas: Yeah, the only constant is change. But the brands that are thoughtful about the trade-off between convenience and control — those are the ones that will come out ahead.