If your company is dedicated to having social media and building a fan base on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, ask yourself, are you using every part of your site correctly to include ways to become a fan without distracting the shopping process? I’ve been looking through a ton of ecommerce sites lately and found a few serious flaws in plans as well as a couple of very creative ways that different companies are using social media to build a fan base and not distract the shopping process. Here are three things you can do to help increase sales as well as grow your fan base.
1. Customer service with live chat. The most obvious thing here is to have the person on live chat mention to follow us and provide the customer with a link. The problem is that this seems a bit pushy. Instead, you can do what Zappos does. When you open a live chat session, you’ll see their become a fan on Facebook icon. Not only is Zappos known for amazing customer support, but because you get amazing customer service from them, it is seriously easy to want to become a fan. One thing that Zappos is missing though is the ability to open a second window and tweet about the amazing customer support.
A second thing you could do with your live chat box is when a session ends, have a link to follow and like you on Facebook and Twitter. The one thing you really need to think about though is if your employees are actually giving good customer support. If your customers are not happy with how they were spoken to or you could not help them, this gives them a way to instantly hurt your brand online. Luckily companies like Zappos have amazing customer support so they don’t have to worry.
2. The confirmation page. Although you may have a Twitter follow and Facebook like icon on your confirmation page, have you thought about letting people tweet or post that they have just purchased a product from you and what that product is? By having a box open that says share on Facebook and Twitter and including the product in it, you can not only help to increase your sales and exposure, but many times people who are friends with other people have the same interests or like the same things so this could be an easy way to generate more sales. Another thing you may want to do is include a Pin this on Pinterest button that lets them pin what they bought. You’ll need to make sure you have a large image on the page though for Pinterest to be able to work.
3. The icons you use and how they work. This is one that I have talked about a lot. When you place the social media icons on your site, test them all to make sure that they do not actually take the person off of your site. Instead use icons and buttons that open a small window and let people share from there. This way you keep them on your site and don’t let them get distracted on social media sites. Another thing you should think about doing is pre-filling out the way the tweet, pin or share will look.
For Twitter, use hashtags in the title or the format to get more exposure. For Facebook, try using heavily searched and relevant keywords, or terms like sale if the product is on sale. With Pinterest, make sure you have a link back to your site so people that are reading the description can and hopefully will click through and visit you. This is all very important to helping increase traffic, sales and not losing your current visitor that is already shopping on your site.
Social media is a great way to build a following and help to increase your sales. You just have to be smart about it. Don’t let it distract your customers and remember that not every social media channel or site is geared towards driving instant sales. Sometimes you have to collect their information or data so that you can remarket to them later and then turn them into a customer. You also don’t want to distract anyone who is already on your site or get them to leave your site since they are already looking at your products and shopping. Think about what you are doing and where you are asking people to follow you or become a fan. Then think about your customer service and if it is good enough. Are you making it easy for people to share their purchases after they have already shopped and are you making sure that people are using the correct keywords when they tweet? There are a ton of ways to help increase your following and sales by using social media icons on your site, you just have to think about how well you provide a service and where the correct places to use the social media icons are.
