Thinking about trying out social e-commerce in 2015?
Why Social Media and E-Commerce Aren’t A Match Made in Heaven
Your energy (and budget) may be better spent elsewhere: people are just not quite ready to shop away using the same tools as for chatting with friends, catching up on news and playing the Candy Crush Saga – on Facebook and at work.
As the infographic below suggests, online buying is still not an offline, social (without the “media” part) experience. Only 17% of retailers have their catalog on Facebook and only 4%, or less than a quarter of those who listed, enabled checkout. Earlier we wrote about product information management (or PIM) services that help organize cross-channel marketing efforts – and services like Akeneo are great at managing product data centrally – as opposed to updating product data for every channel individually.
So far, sharing exclusive offers and feature deals are your best tools in the social selling ecosystem. For a bigger impact you can also leverage social media in combination with a customer loyalty program – one like Sweettooth.
Key Takeaways for Increasing E-Commerce Sales Conversions Using Social Media
Most consumers are not comfortable sharing their credit card information over social media
Retailers lack personality online and shopping on social media isn’t as personal as expected
Retailers still don’t have a social media strategy
Retailers can gain a competitive advantage over the competition by establishing social media strategy now. That Social Media strategy should not push to sell. Ideally, it should give the brand character, be personal and act as a platform for the brand’s voice – and form part of the overall sales strategy.
The infographic below shows the current state of Social E-Commerce (via ArgyleSocial). We hope it will help inspire your social strategy.
