Social Commerce FAQ: Are more consumers going to websites or Facebook to do business?

For any business, a lot of time and attention is put into the company website.  It’s understandable but do you think most businesses know traffic to company websites is off -24% in the last year according to WebTrends?
By contrast, the time spent on social networks is up +25% over this time?  It’s now 25 minutes of every hour people are online.  Hmm. 
What’s more, 42% of consumers now proactively follow businesses on Facebook, Twitter and the company’s blog.  In fact, the average person follows six retailers.  That’s according to the Social Commerce Study from Shop.org.
Social commerce is the merger of ecommerce and social media.  And that’s what consumers are doing.  They’re doing business on social media.

The chart shows blogs do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to social commerce.  While 73% of businesses have Facebook and Twitter pages, 44% have blogs.  The number is increasing.

Here’s what consumers are looking from company’s social networks.  Are you giving it to them?

  • 58% look for deals and savings
  • 49% want to receive updates on  products or services
  • 39% look for information on contests and/or events

Within the next 2 years, more customers will access the internet through their mobile devices than their desktops or laptops.

Already, 42% of  Twitter users and 34% of Facebook access their accounts at least once a day with their mobile devices. 32% access YouTube clips.  In fact, social networking is the fasting growing mobile activity.

Social media is likely to play an even larger role in social commerce on mobile, especially when you consider:

  • 72% of consumer already use their mobile phones to receive coupons, product deals and price alert
  • 55% actively use their mobile phones to browse the web
  • 47% access customers reviews while in store
  • 34% compare prices on their mobile phones while they are shopping
  • 33% use mobile phone to find nearby products to purchase
  • 21% use bar code scanning to find the best price

Source: PriceGrabber
Do you know where your customers are going to do business with you?  Are you there?


3 Comments

  1. Michele Price

    Rob I Love how you put together your posts with visual data.
    I read the same things and when I see how you put it together I do the smack upside head V-8 commercial.

    1. Rob Petersen

      Thanks Michele. Coming from you that means a lot. You know what they say, a picture is worth a 1000 words or, in the case of a blogpost, at least a couple hundred.
      Rob

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