Social Commerce:
Taking Your Online Store to the Next Level
Social commerce accounted for more than $3 billion in transactions last year, but that number is still just 1.1% of the total eCommerce transactions for the same period. As we get closer to 2017, experts believe that social commerce is still developing at a staggering rate. Getting into social commerce can really help take your online store to the next level. Tapping into the demands of social media marketing however is not as easy as it seems. To help you get started we’re going to talk about some of the best tips and tricks on getting started with social commerce in this article.
Offer Rewards for Sharing
While social media platforms are racing to develop their own native ecommerce systems, the best way to tap into social commerce is by persuading users to share more of your products and pages. This can be done by making it easy to share products from your catalogue and by offering incentives to those who actually share.
One example is using social media sharing to allow free downloads or samples. This is a highly effective social media marketing campaign to use, especially since it helps your online store gain more exposure. As more users share your pages on their social media channels, you’re reaching their followers and a wider range of audience. The rewards don’t have to be big or expensive. A loyalty program that also rewards customers for sharing or writing testimonials is a good start. The same can be said for offering free samples and discounts to those who share pages from your online store.
Optimize Mobile Shopping
Before you invest further into the world of social commerce, it’s also important to make sure that your customers can enjoy a smooth and enjoyable mobile shopping experience. This means making the entire ecommerce site mobile friendly and using payment services such as High Risk Pay to help make credit card payments possible. We’re already seeing more than 50% of today’s internet traffic coming from mobile devices, and this number will only increase. Not optimizing your mobile shopping experience would be a mistake that prevents you from turning traffic into sales and loyal customers.
Don’t Just Stick to the Big Ones
Of course, you may think that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the social networks to target when you want to push your social commerce efforts. These platforms already have a direct “Buy Now” button and can be integrated with multiple ecommerce scripts easily. However, focusing all of your efforts into the big social networks is actually a mistake. There are other platforms to use too. YouTube, for example, is a great way to attract new customers through videos and valuable content. Snapchat has just released its payment transfer service for ecommerce site owners to use. There are other smaller social networks and online forums that have taken the same steps in an effort to facilitate more social commerce transactions.
Targeting these social networks, and using the previous tips we talked about in this article, will help you expand your online store to a new level. Before you know it, you’ll be generating numerous sales from social media.