Social media helps in boosting ecommerce sales - Is it true? 10 effective tips for web designers

Social media has drastically altered the landscape of the world of e-commerce and it has done so predominantly by changing consumer behaviour. Or, some might argue, by granting corporate sector the ability to better understand consumer behaviour. Marketing no longer remains a one way road in which information is merely communicated to potential customers, rather, customers now have an active voice is determining the way products are marketed to them.

Introduction

With technological advancement and success of online stores like Shopify development company, corporations have been able to develop methods of collecting feedback about products and services. Consumers can inform companies of their experiences, negative or positive. A review left on the facebook page of a business carries immense weight and the power to go viral, which will impact the company’s public image as well as sales. Thousands can be convinced to try out your or products or reject them.

According to studies done by a marketing firm called SEtalks, social media can boost sales up by almost 71% - making it an integral feature of marketing plans. Consumers rush to check the online presence of brands they are interested in, which means that a well handled online image becomes a prerequisite.

Social media undoubtedly has had a great impact on how businesses choose to interact with customers. Now that we have established that social media does help boost e-commerce sales, lets now discuss 10 ways with which web designers of companies can effectively capture the attention of their audience.

1. Acquaint Yourself with Your Customer Base

Ecommerce web designers should employ tools to help them monitor the online activity of their customers.
This will help you document what users are interested in when they visit your website, how they landed on your website, and what products catch their attention the most. Most importantly, use of analytics will help evaluate which social media platforms generate most traffic on your website. This will in turn help in future marketing choices of investment that focus on the users most likely to make a purchase.

2. Add a personal touch

A company’s website should never look or feel robotic. That is guaranteed to drive customers away! Either through employees or through chatbots that can simulate normal conversation, make sure that the website has a way to answer the queries and comments of customers while also leaving room to make suggestions, much like how it is in a regular store. Interactive websites can be like a wave of the magic wand for your sales and may even help secure a loyal customer base. The word of mouth related to your company is also more likely to be positive if customers find their concerns addressed adequately on the website, and through amiable interactions.

3. Use Tracking and Analytics

Web designers should set up Google Analytics as well as AdWords on the website in order to effectively perform data tracking for future marketing campaigns. For instance, if a company is running an ad on Facebook, then it is better to create a pixel for that and attach it to your website in order to monitor how much traffic Facebook is generating. Campaign URL Builder is also a great business tool by Google which can be employed in order to organize social media campaigns well.

4. Make Required Adjustments

Being flexible is the most important quality to embrace for any web developer. Getting higher conversion rates is a never ending process of monitoring and adjusting accordingly. You need to find innovative, cost minimising and effective ways of capturing customers and this requires constant adjustments. Are your ads not generating enough clicks? Expand the audience or make changes to the ad. A web designer should be everready to make changes where needed.

5. Retargeting

This refers to allowing customers access to information about the products they were inclined towards on their last few visits to the website. Retargeting also works in a different sense: users of social media who have recently searched for apparel will start seeing ads of clothing brands they might want to try out. It is an effective way to nudge consumers into buying a product.

6. BUY button

Most social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest now have the ‘buy’ button on their websites. What this implies is that these social media sites are opening themselves up as marketplaces, something which web designers should note and take full advantage of. Marketing planner and web developers should work closely with the sales department to ensure that a system of selling products is set up on as many platforms as
possible to allow customers easy access to their products, without the need to visit the offical website.

7. Securing sales with hotlinks

Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat allow links of e stores to be posted, hence making access to shopping cart easier for customers. There are still some websites, notably being Instagram, which don’t allow liberal use of hotlinks. Digital Commerce 360 claims that of the limited companies that did adopt these strategies, a considerable number reported boost in sales.

8. Special Offers

Web developers should keep in mind that one of the best ways to generate sales is through limited time offers that are presented in an attractive way on social media. Offers and discounts are sure to catch the eye of customers. Effective communication with sites like Facebook is the key here. Facebook even lets businesses create offers for products via its ad network.

9. Simple Yet Solid Website Design

The website should be designed in a way that makes it user friendly while also being easy on the eyes. A balance between making it comprehensive and captivating should be achieved.  Here are some UX tips to help increase sales on your website.

10. Carefully Planned Checkout Process

Last but certainly not the least important tip to remember is the checkout process. Consumers are very likely to abandon their purchase and look elsewhere if the checkout process is too time consuming and complicated. Web designers should prioritize developing a simple and breezy process of purchasing goods which allows fast sales.

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Author bio: "Bilal Imtiaz is an Online Marketing Specialist with 1.5 years of experience in Digital Media and is currently SEO Executive at Magecrowd, a leading e-commerce web design and development agency. Over the years, Magecrowd has successfully delivered projects in Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, Joomla and other CMS/shopping cart platforms. You can find him on LinkedIn."