Improve Ecommerce Conversions with These Social Media Marketing Tips

By: Dhes Pillay

How to Use Social Media to Improve Ecommerce Conversions

With more than 2 billion users worldwide, social media has become one of the leading channels for marketing your brand. And naturally, you want to use it to expand your reach and improve ecommerce conversions.

But marketing on social media isn’t as simple as just posting photos of your products. You need to carefully implement proven tactics that will ensure better conversions. And that’s exactly where this post is going to help you.

You’ll discover some of the best ways to improve ecommerce conversions using social media. Most of these tactics will deal with how you attract, engage with, and win the trust of your target audience. And some of them are concerned with enhancing people’s experiences and simplifying the purchase process.

Find out how you can use social media to improve ecommerce conversions below.

#1: Encourage User-Generated Content

User-generated content is crucial for conversions, as it acts as a form of social proof. It can help you win the trust of your target customers. When prospective customers see photos of your existing customers with your products, they can see the products in context. And seeing real people promoting your products will also seem more authentic and trustworthy.

This can reduce doubt about buying your products, and improve ecommerce conversions. In fact, Bazaarvoice reported that shoppers who interact with customer-generated content are 106% more likely to convert.

A Link Humans case study highlighted how fashion retailer ASOS has been using social media to engage their fans. According to the case study, the brand receives significant responses for competition content and posts that encourage involvement from their fans.

For example, their #AsSeenOnMe campaign has been a huge hit with ASOS customers. Through this campaign, the retailer encouraged customers to share photos in which they’re wearing their ASOS purchases, and then use the hashtag to tag the post. In exchange, they could get a chance to be featured in the website’s UGC gallery.

To date, there have been almost 460,000 posts using the #AsSeenOnMe hashtag on Instagram. As you can see in the screenshot below, people share eye-catching photos highlighting the retailer’s products.

You can execute a similar campaign with a few tweaks according to your needs. For example, instead of featuring UGC on your website, you could feature it on your social media account. Or you could host a UGC contest to promote your latest products, or for a special event or holiday such as Christmas, or Thanksgiving.

#2: Make Shopping Easier on Instagram

Despite Instagram having high engagement rates, it has been challenging for retailers to drive conversions using the platform until recently. This is because it has limitations in terms of sharing links. Users could only share one link, which is displayed in their bio.

Users would have to click on the link in the bio, and then browse through the retailer’s website to find the product that caught their attention.

This can be time-consuming and frustrating. And many shoppers may have changed their minds before they even found the product, making it difficult for retailers to improve ecommerce conversions.

But that’s now slowly changing as Instagram introduced the ability for retailers to provide a better shopping experience. This experience involves retailers adding shoppable product tags to photos. Users can tap on a, “tap to view” icon to see tags for each product in the photo.

And if they select a tag, they can find out more details about the product. The product details view also has a “shop now” button, which users can click to land on the product page and complete their purchase.

This streamlines the purchase process, and makes it much easier for retailers to improve ecommerce conversions.

EXAMPLE

Here’s an example of how the tags would look.

These shoppable tags, however, are currently available only for select retailers selling apparel, jewelry, or beauty products in the U.S. In order to be eligible, you need to convert your account into a Business Profile, and your account must be in English.

But if you aren’t eligible to use shoppable product tags on Instagram, you can still make shopping easier by setting up a shoppable Instagram gallery. You can use tools like Scoutsee and Pixlee to set up this gallery. The landing page will resemble your Instagram feed, and displays your posts as clickable images on which you can add links to the product page.

EXAMPLE: Ringor

Retailers like Ringor have used shoppable Instagram galleries to make shopping easier for their customers. They have included a link in their bio, which would lead to the shoppable gallery. Since setting up this gallery, the retailer found that 77% of visitors land on a featured product page after they interact with the shoppable gallery.

Here’s a screenshot of how their shoppable gallery looks.

Visitors will just have to click on the photos to view the product details, which will also display a “Buy Now” button. This will take them to the product page so they can complete the purchase.

#3: Make Shopping Easier with Buyable Pins

If you plan on optimizing your social media marketing plan to improve ecommerce conversions, you shouldn’t ignore Pinterest. According to Shopify, the average order value of Pinterest shoppers is $50, which is higher than other social media channels. And it’s the second most popular social media source of traffic to Shopify stores.

In addition to this, 93% of users plan their purchases through Pinterest. These stats suggest that Pinterest plays a major role in driving high-converting traffic and high-value customers to ecommerce websites.

So to cater to those shoppers, you need to optimize your Pinterest marketing tactics and make shopping easier for users on the platform. And in order to do that, you should start implementing buyable pins, which are available for BigCommerce, Shopify, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud stores.

These pins help shoppers complete their purchases without the need to leave Pinterest. In a buyable pin, users not only see the product image, but other details, such as pricing and stock availability.

There’s also a “Buy Now” button, which users can click on to purchase the product. This increased ease of purchase can improve ecommerce conversions.

EXAMPLE

Here’s an example of how a buyable pin looks.

Several Pinterest case studies have shown proof of how buyable pins drive more sales for ecommerce stores.

EXAMPLE: Gardener’s Supply Company

For Gardener’s Supply Company, for example, buyable pins have helped them drive twice the amount of traffic than they did before. Their sales have also increased approximately threefold as a result of these buyable pins.

#4: Enable Social Signups or Logins

This point isn’t going to cover what you do on social media, but how you integrate it into your ecommerce store. In any case, it’s about using social media to improve ecommerce conversions.

It’s safe to assume that many of your shoppers already have a social media account. And enabling them to sign up or log in using those accounts can help drive conversions.

You may have noticed that you drive plenty of traffic from social media, but you have a high cart abandonment rate. According to the Baymard Institute, this could be because you expected shoppers to register in order to checkout, or because the checkout process was too long or complicated for them.

A social media signup or login option can tackle these two issues. Even if you introduce a guest checkout option, it’s still crucial that you include a social media signup button.

People normally refuse to sign up because they don’t want to go through the entire signup process of entering their email and personal info. And the social media signup option eliminates the inconvenience as people can easily click on one button to register.

A social media login button can also eliminate some of the steps necessary for shoppers to checkout. This simplifies the checkout process significantly, improving the chances of people completing their purchases.

EXAMPLE: LoginRadius

LoginRadius tested the impact of social login buttons on their ebook landing pages. They gave visitors the option to access the ebook through Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn, as you can see in the screenshot below.

When they compared this page with a page that had no social login option, they found that the social logins had a huge impact on conversion rate. While the one without social login had a 32% conversion rate, the landing page with social login had a conversion rate of 49%.

So there’s a 52% increase in conversion rate when they provide a social login option. You can implement a similar technique in your store to improve ecommerce conversions.

#5: Invest in Social Media Ads

Despite all these efforts, there’s still a chance that your ecommerce conversion rate isn’t improving. This may likely because you’re not reaching the right audience or a large number of potential customers.

If you haven’t yet built a significant social following, it might be a good idea to invest in advertising on social media. This will help you target and reach a large audience that’s likely to be interested in your products.

Advertising on Instagram

Instagram offers a treasury of advertising options for marketers. You can design video ads, carousel ads, and image ads with a button that will allow the audience to “Shop Now.” And now you even have the option to invest in Stories ads and reach an engaged audience, which will eventually improve ecommerce conversions.

EXAMPLE: TOUS Jewelry

For TOUS Jewelry, Stories ads played a huge role in telling their brand story to raise awareness about their brand and products, which eventually resulted in higher sales.

Read More at: https://shanebarker.com/blog/improve-ecommerce-conversions-social-media/