What is website social media integration?
In simple terms, social media integration is an act of connecting your social media accounts to your website. It helps get visibility and accessibility to your social media accounts directly. Although it has several benefits at all levels of marketing, social media serves as the strongest trust factor, which helps to convert potential customers very easily.
Most popular social media platforms for integration
Some of the most commonly used social media integrations are as follows.
1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. Pinterest
4. Tiktok
5. Youtube
6. Linkedin
7. Twitter
8. Snapchat
9. Reddit
Benefits of Social Media Integration on E-commerce Websites
1. Just a simple follow or connection button on your website can increase relevant traffic to your social media platforms without any extra effort.
2. Social media icons make your website very interactive and easy to communicate with the comments widgets. Connecting with your customers can help you build a stronger brand reputation.
3. You can gain insights into customers’ social behaviour and, in turn, publish content with a higher probability of engagement.
4. If a few visitors do not convert after visiting your website, you will stay top-of-mind for those potential prospects by constantly reminding them about your service or product. It gives you a chance to get better quality leads for your business.
5. You can embed social media widgets to see the trending videos published on your TikTok (for example) account or the ‘how to do it?’ tutorials on youtube. It helps to improve the website user experience and improves retention time on the webpage.
6. An increase in dwell time favours SEO. If several visitors stay on your page for a dwell time higher than others, Google understands your web page content is more suitable. Hence, you have a higher chance of a good ranking.
7. Social Media testimonials in the form of videos or images give higher credibility. Since social media highly influences purchase intent, these testimonials can encourage sales.
Types of social media integrations
1. Embed social feed
2. Share/connect buttons
3. Widgets
4. Sign in (using social media credentials)
Integration Tools For E-commerce Websites
1. Add This
2. Social Login Tools
3. Open Graph And Twitter Card Tags
4. Taggbox
5. ShareThis
6. WordPress Plugins – Instagram Feed Pro, Walls.io, Curator.io
Do’s
1. Always use a setting to open social media websites on other tabs to switch back to your webpage easily.
2. You can add social media icons to the blog sites, careers page and thank you pages. Ensure that all the icons are present only at the footer so that it doesn’t draw attention.
3. Use simple mono colour icons to maintain a low key profile.
4. Make sure that you link active accounts with a good amount of content for display.
5. You can show metrics like the number of monthly shares and followers only if your site maintains a spectacular graph of social media growth.
6. Use simple widgets to avoid slowing down the pages of your websites. Heavy Javascripts increase the overall page load time.
7. Display social media videos on product pages. For example, you can embed a youtube link with the title – ” How to use the product? ”
8. Use social media-based commenting tools which encourage users to sign in and comment.
Don’ts
1. Don’t add social media follow and share icons to the header of the webpage. Doing so may increase drop-offs and bounce rates. Invite them in!
2. Don’t mess with the official logos of companies to avoid being highlighted and caught up under legal policies.
3. Avoid adding share buttons to the service page of your website. It can be very distracting.
There is no hard and fast rule, but it is better not to include share buttons on product pages. The goal is to drive sales. The ‘Buy Now or Add To Cart” button should be the centre of attraction. SEO based web design is to give people fewer options. If you need someone to save and share the product on social media, it’s on the checkout page.
Example of social media integration on BM Consulting
If you need help with social media integrations or in finding the best practices, you can contact us or visit our website for all digital marketing services.
This blog has been compiled by Ayushi Sharma.