Are Your Visitors Anti-Social?
It’s an online store's job to educate consumers about the products it sells. We tell visitors how products work and why they need (or should want) to buy them. We do all this with the goal of making money.
When it comes to Social Media, however, most ecommerce sites make the assumption that their visitors know what to do; that customers realize the benefits of clicking to share pages, and commenting on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Then we sit back and wait - and wait - for better results, and wonder why they don't come as quickly as we'd like.
Forget about statistics and the most common tools. Hey, I've got 800+ friends on Facebook and rarely do I see them participating in word-of-mouth advertising. Kaboodle? Most of them don't even know what it is. Twitter? Many people think it's just a waste of time.
As businesses, we want to reap the benefits of social media, but we're missing something that’s as simple as it is basic, and it's costing us money and potential customers.
As retailers and developers, we need to educate shoppers so they see value in getting involved and communicating about more than just how many red bricks they need to complete their horse stable in FarmVille.
Take Franklin-Covey, for example. Every year, the company invites thousands of its customers to participate in a rather lengthy survey about their business activities and which designs appeal to them most. While the survey takes more than 20 minutes, I always take part, because I see value in giving the company my input and feedback. Since I use their planning tools, I want to tell the powers-that-be just what I want when it comes to planner page layout, color schemes and page sizes.
Simply put, if customers don't know how to use a tool, or don't see the value (what they'll receive in return), they're going to ignore all those fancy icons sitting on the page. Those icons, then, wind up wasting prime real estate.
You can change this, though, and rather easily. With a few links and/or popups (user-prompted, of course!), you can quickly tell shoppers what each service actually is and why it's beneficial (e.g. follow us and get notified of exclusive sales). Definitely list the pros of subscribing to each service (on Kaboodle, it's a one-stop wish list).
You should also follow the example of Whole Foods, which, instead of linking visitors to their Twitter profile, loads a page explaining the benefits. Ideally, small businesses should use a page like this to explain the benefits and advise visitors how to create a Twitter "list" so they won't miss anything you want to communicate.
The only stats you can really lend weight to in this regard suggest that a large portion of people heavily involved with social media sharing are techies and businesses (including social media experts). By opening the eyes of your average shopper, you stand to gain quite a bit. If nothing else, you'll be further branding your name as the company that taught them what social media is all about and what it’s there for.
1 Comment
iPhone Application Development says:
Hi Pamela! Very informative article. This supports to all product based sites. If we provide the reason to our consumers about our product or service, it helps us to increase the reliability and prevent many misunderstanding. It help consumer to know the goodness and badness of the product that he willing to buy. If it is useful to consumer then he definitely take go for it otherwise simply navigate.
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