Few online shops have social networks media, but the majority of UK shoppers buy from them
More than two thirds of all UK online shoppers use social media, with Facebook being by far the most popular but half of top online retailers have a minimal or non existent presence social media presence.
These are the findings of a poll among 10,000 visitors to the UK’s top 40 e-commerce undertaken by ForeSee Results, an organisation that measures online customer satisfaction.
The study indicated that of the 69% of online consumers who use social networking sites, about 37% opted to ‘friend’, ‘follow’ or ‘subscribe’ to retailers, with more than half of such respondents doing so in order to learn about their products.
A further 40% did so to learn about special deals, while only 6% used social media primarily to obtain customer support.
About 56% of all online shoppers used Facebook, however, with the figure jumping to a huge 80% if the focus was narrowed to regular social media users.
This would appear to imply that the site is the best place to reach shoppers in both categories, not only because they are there already, but also because it appears that many are keen to hear from chosen brands.
Despite such findings, an unofficial look at the Facebook pages of the top 100 online retailers indicated that a quarter had no official presence and a further quarter had less than 10,000 followers.
In a further note of caution, nearly three quarters of social media fans chose to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ less than five organisations, with only 4% interacting with more than 20. This means that the majority of online shoppers give very few retailers any air time.
Kevin Entell, vice president of retail strategy at ForSee, said: “Site visitors who also interact with a company on a social media site are more satisfied, more committed to the brand, and more likely to make future purchases from that company.”
But there was a chicken and egg situation taking place, he added. “It is likely that customers who are more satisfied and loyal to begin with are the ones who will friend us on Facebook or subscribe to our YouTube channels,” Entell said. “However, research shows that when retailers provide rewarding social media experiences, our customers become even more satisfied and loyal.”
The results were backed up by another poll from digital marketing agency dotCommerce among 100 UK retailers. It indicated that a mere 42% of UK retailers had a social media presence, with only 12% using more than one site.
Of the retailers using such sites, only 24% had a Facebook presence, while 26% preferred Twitter. They preferred to employ the latter to keep consumers aware of product updates (73%), push out marketing messages (63%) and company news (58%).
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