While we mentioned in a previous post how social media can be a valuable tool for online businesses, new statistics have arisen which show just how big a part of our lives they have become. Two reports, one by Hitwise and one from Econsultancy show some remarkable results.
The results produced by Hitwise show that in the UK in May, there were more people using social networking sites than search engines. This is an alarming statistic for some as it shows the extent to which social networking has grown, to where it can attract more visitors than the giant search engines. From a business point of view this brings up the question, where should your investment in advertising be made? And if social media is going to become a consistently more visited medium than the search engines, will people be as easy to pitch to when they are chatting to their friends about a product as opposed to when they are actively searching for a something they want?
With this in mind, Econsultancy’s 3rd annual Online Measurement and Strategy Report handily shows that since 2009 there has been a 9% increase in the number of agencies using social media monitoring analytics. This is the biggest increase in all types of analytics, proving that people are now beginning to appreciate the power of social media and are looking for ways to use them to help their business. The report shows how organisations use a variety of methods to monitor social media including free to use feeds and dashboards, web analytics tools, paid for reputation monitoring tools, a mixture of all of these or of course, none of these. It seems business is going social in a big way.
However, Hitwise’s statistics when broken down show that Google on its own is still the most visited site in the UK. This may be just a sign that Google is beating its rivals into submission leaving a space in the stats which happens to be filled by a social networking site (Facebook is second, 2% behind), but if you look at it another way, people may be getting from social networking what they were looking for from search engines, plus all the fun and games on top. Why go back to a search engine?
Whether these stats herald the beginning of a new age or just signify a blip being followed up by a conscientious tech savvy business community, only time will tell. But if companies are to move to a more social media centric forum you can be sure that Lancore will be there ready and waiting with all the online multi-currency payment processing required.
As an intrinsic part of the Lancore team Martin Able is specialised in arranging secure payment gateways for quick and effective money transfer services.
Social Media is big business and with the right plan of action and a delicate touch any site can utilise people power to improve their ecommerce. Here are a few brands which have made a big difference to their ecommerce growth using social media.