Do the numbers surprise you? They did me. Please chime in in the comments what you think, and tweet your favorite stats.

Tweetables

• The average social share for commercial products produces $2.04 in value Tweet this

• The average email share (friend to friend) is worth $17.93 in revenue Tweet this

• The average Google+ share is worth $10.78 in revenue Tweet this

• The average Facebook share is worth $2.35 in revenue Tweet this

• The average Twitter share is worth $1.62 in revenue Tweet this

• The average Pinterest share is worth $1.25 in revenue Tweet this

• Facebook accounts for 39% of social revenue vs 20% Twitter, 16% email Tweet this

• Apparel is the most social-shared retail category followed by general stores and electronics Tweet this

• Cameras are the least socially shared consumer product but has the highest per-share value at $19.75 Tweet this

• Tumblr beats Facebook, Google+ and Twitter in social AOV at $200.33. Google+ next at $192.77 Tweet this

• Enough with the constant updates! With Facebook, web applications and even some ecommerce sites, the only constant is change. As soon as a user catches up with the old experience, some creative decides to jumble everything around or add and remove major features. The benefit of adding a new shiny object could be outweighed by user frustration. And unless you’re as indispensable as Facebook, it could cause defection from your site, application or service.

• People worry about privacy. We can laugh at the “privacy window,” but there is real concern that applications are sharing too much on our behalf, including ecommerce sites that use Facebook Connect.

• Social proof isn’t as powerful as you think. We all have social connections outside our inner circle, and their likes and activities are less interesting to us. Ecommerce sites and other applications that connect to Facebook may overestimate affinities, and use them to personalize in an irrelevant way. You may want to focus your personalization efforts more on what you know about your Facebook-Connected customer’s own preferences rather than their entire social graph.

Despite its low adoption, social log in offers benefits to both a business and customers. What are the pros and cons of using it, and best practices should you choose to implement Facebook Connect for registration and account sharing?

Top reasons why ecommerce sites should use Facebook Log in

Reduce friction in the registration process

Web form abandonment pain needs no explanation. The appeal of a streamlined – sometimes one-click registration doesn’t either. If a site wants to ask for custom field inputs, a web form can pre-populate form fields from Facebook data like name, birthdate, gender and city to speed up the process. For example, Burberry prefills with all gray fields below with profile data.

Erradicate password failure

Logging in with social credentials eliminates the need for password recall, especially helpful for returning customer checkout.

Personalize and merchandize

The ability to pull profile data like Likes and interests can help you tailor home page content and product suggestions, or to persist to CRM data for segmentation analysis.

Interestingly, the Betapond study found 86% of ecommerce sites using Facebook Connect requested permission to access the friend list, but only 31% requested access to Likes, and 17% to interests. When it comes to personalization, the fruit hangs much lower when you can glean from user’s own profile than try to infer interests from the social graph. However, access to the friend list is useful for birthday reminders and gift suggestions, as well as social proof — identifying when friends (and friends of friends) have purchased, Liked, reviewed or added a product to a wish list.

Keep in mind, if you’re site experience is quite different for Facebook users than non-FB’ers, consider the impact on your analytics. Figure out how you will segment Facebook and non-Facebook to identify if personalization is working or not.

Top reasons why ecommerce sites avoid Facebook Log in

FUD

Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts exist around security, the degree of control over customer information and skepticism of its appeal to customers (to name a few). The first two are easy to rebut – Facebook Connect is built using industry standards for open authentication, and the business is in full control of what data is shared with Facebook. Whether or not customers want social log in can be gauged by its usage after you implement it, but it’s not a feature that can be A/B tested, because users that sign up with Facebook can’t authenticate if you remove it after a round of testing.

It’s tough to back out

It’s possible to move Facebook registrants to your regular log in, but it requires their action — action they may never take. If social log in’s time saving attracts the lazy customer, it could be an even tougher feat to accomplish.

Accidental authentication

Some sites will auto-authenticate your visit if you’re currently logged into Facebook on your machine. Customers that don’t want others who may use that device to accidentally log in should use session timeout or request social authentication on every visit, regardless of whether someone’s logged in to a Facebook account at the time. This may be a strong case for industries like telecom to not use social authentication.

Tips for optimizing social log in

Only ask for what you need

Even if you’re pre-filling your regular form with Facebook data, less is more for the user. The registrant will look over the fields and notice what you’re pulling. Only ask for the fields you’ll actually use for personalization or customer segmentation. Pre-filling hometown when it’s not in addition to current city, for example, could give the impression you’re asking for TMI.

Ditto for sequential requests for permissions. Though the user can skip these permissions and still use their Facebook credentials to create their account, this is not always understood by privacy-wary customers.

Apply the right styling

Bazarchic’s button styling is near identical to Facebook’s in color and shape. This may cause confusion with the Facebook Connect button, which looks like instructions rather than a clickable call to action.

Cdiscount.com makes the clear distinction between connection options.

Make the Facebook button prominent

Dawanda presents the customer with a sign-up form, but places the Facebook Connect option at the bottom of the form. The user sees the registration form most prominently, and thinks “hard work.” Show the social log in option before a form, either at the top, or in a step before the form is revealed.

Link to an explanation

Dawanda gets it right with a FUD-crushing link to more information.

Avoid asking for a password

The beauty of Facebook authentication is it negates the need for a password, so think twice about asking the user to create a separate one, as in the Burberry example.

Pare down the menu

You’ve got a lot of social connection options to choose from, but offering more than one or two is problematic. Not only does it make customers think hard and make a decision which social network to commit to, you risk losing the customer account should Yahoo, AOL or MySpace, for example, stop supporting their API or shut down. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are your best bets, but offering just Facebook is the safest bet.

Don’t forget mobile

Ensure your design and process is usable on mobile phones. Many mobile users are logged into their Facebook app, and a simplified sign-up can be much appreciated.

Tweetables

• Internet users spend 22.5% of their time online social networking Tweet this

• By 2015, social commerce is expected to reach $30 billion globally Tweet this

• 87% of the Fortune 100 use at least one social media presence, Twitter most popular Tweet this

• 87% of companies have both Facebook and Twitter presences vs. just over 50% for Youtube and Linkedin Tweet this

• Only slightly more than 1/3 of companies worldwide have a presence on Pinterest and/or Google+ Tweet this

• More than 80% of SMBs plan to increase social media marketing in 2013 Tweet this

• 62% of marketers say social media has become more vital to marketing campaigns w/in the last 6mos Tweet this

• 25% of SMBs have no social marketing strategy Tweet this

• 28% of SMBs measure the ROI of their social media marketing Tweet this

• 83% of companies say Facebook is their preferred social tool for brand marketing Tweet this

• On average, companies only respond to 30% of feedback received through social media websites Tweet this

• Only 26% of businesses regularly include a call-to-action in their tweets Tweet this

• Only 44% of customer question tweets are answered within 24hrs Tweet this

• 56% of customer tweets to companies are ignored Tweet this

• 39% of companies do not track their social media responses at all Tweet this

• 46% of online users use social media to review purchase decisions Tweet this

• Only 30 of the top 500 online retailers allow users to log-in with Facebook Tweet this

• Less than 20% of companies have integrated social media with their customer care, sales or product development Tweet this

Rishi Rawat points out a great way to motivate customers to leave that first review — offer an incentive, like loyalty points:

But there’s also another way — recruit staff reviewers.

Tips for staff reviews:

1. Make sure the reviewer truly has tried or owns the product.

Integrity!

2. Don’t make it a sales pitch

An authentic review doesn’t read like product knowledge. For example, instead of:

“This camcorder features a built-in Wi-Fi for wireless video transfer to a PC or online sharing sites likes YouTube and Facebook. It uses AVCHD recording for the highest quality viewing on an HDTV or archiving, or in MP4 format for easy sharing with mobile devices or cloud applications. The 32x optical zoom allows you to take close-ups while you record in seamless HD.”

Describe the experience of really using the item and how it compares to alternatives of the same category. A more constructive review would read something like:

“The video quality on this model is excellent, it’s fairly easy to set up and works on both Windows and MacBook Pro. Another big plus is it downloads directly to an external hard drive, bypassing the computer. Keep in mind it lacks dual card slots and has a relatively short battery life. If you’re a power-filmer you may want to consider grabbing an extended life battery. For the price, it’s still a good deal for casual use.”

3. Don’t be afraid to mention negatives

Your staff are more trustworthy when they describe the pros and cons. A good staff review should describe the pros, cons and alternatives (including product names) that may serve the customer well if the cons are a dealbreaker.

4. Sneak in product knowledge

The screenshot example from Sephora highlights a value prop – camelina oil is “super moisturizing.” Try to tie features to benefits in the review, if possible.

5. Disclose it’s a staff review

The major product review vendors provide staff reviewer badges. Use ‘em. If your solution doesn’t, ensure a signature or disclosure is included somewhere in the text.

6. Stick to one staff review

The purpose of the first review is to give the customer at least one non-marketer opinion of the product, and to provide the visual star review on category, search and product pages. Once you break the ice, let customers pick up the slack. You certainly can add more staff reviews down the road, but the biggest impact comes from the first. Use staff time to write for products that still need that first review.

Additional tips

With reviews, the more the better. According to PowerReviews, you need 7 to 10 reviews to get a stable star rating, and generating “fresh” reviews can help SEO. We’ve got 5 more ideas for getting more customer reviews.

Many marketers disparage social networks’ conversion power, but it’s no wonder when nearly half of it’s potential is wasted by some of the Web’s biggest retail brands. Make sure your site doesn’t squander Pinterest and other link opportunities with one of 4 better ways to handle sold out product pages.

Redirect to Home page

Dumping visitors on the home page is the most popular redirection. Not surprisingly, site owners and marketers often assume everyone is as enthralled by their home page as they are — they’re not. The only way you could further remove the visitor from the context of their visit is to throw up a 404 page.

That said, it’s 1,000 time better than a 404 page (however clever), and at least recoups some SEO link benefit so long as the redirect is a 301 permanent redirect.

Redirect to Category page

Think about the mindset of the visitor. If she’s referred from Pinterest, she’s seen a yummy image and hungry to find a close up, more information, to own it, or find out who is the purveyor of such fine merchandise. If you must pull the product page, redirecting to a category page at least could result in some engagement with similar products.

Redirecting to a category page can also help SEO (depending on how search engines are valuing such links these days).

Keep URL, ask for opt-in

The best choice for usability is to keep the product page live, and allow the visitor to see the product and read the description. Nobody really wants to land on a surprise page, even if the product is sold out.

If there’s hope of your product’s resurrection, let the visitor opt-in to being contacted by you when it’s back.

While you’re at it, ask the user to opt-in to your regular email program and follow in social networks. Seize the click!

Keep URL, suggest close alternatives

Showing cross-sells on a product page is a start, optimizing their placement will go further. Etsy does a fantastic job suggesting similar products based on seller-generated categorization and keyword tags.

These cross-sells are only displayed across the top when the user hits a product page that’s no longer active. All other pages are merchandised along the bottom.

Showing a smaller set of suggestions likely has a higher click through rate than sending the user to an entire category page of alternatives. The tighter you can tie the products (by keyword, brand, category, social affinity or combination of these), the better.

A creative approach is to suggest connecting with a “fashion advisor” or an expert from your customer service team.

This call to action can be combined with prominently displayed, smart cross-sells is a one-two punch for avoiding abandonment.

While this tactic isn’t a magic bullet for converting all social traffic, minimizing any leaks from unavailable products can have a positive impact on your reported conversion rates from sites like Pinterest (or Google Images).

(Email subscribers, can’t see video? View this post on the Web)

How it works is simple. Amex holders sync their card and Twitter accounts, and follow @AmexSync to watch for deals of the day and corresponding hashtags. @AmexSync will respond with a confirmation hashtag, which the user must retweet within 15 minutes. Product is delivered to the billing address connected to the Amex card.

Amex also has a (previously launched) Offers program, where discounts can be claimed through the same process, and savings can be to purchase at the Offer retailer’s website (so long as the synced Amex is used for payment).

Aside from making impulse buying frictionless, the brilliance is the baked-in social component — all sales through the channel are broadcast through the cardholder’s network. Twitter accounts must be public in order for @AmexSync to read and respond, so every offer claimed and purchase made is a public affair.

Participating brands benefit from the social boost. Upcoming products include Kindle Fire, Donna Karan jewelry, Sony Action Cam and Xbox 360.

What’s most intriguing is it’s not an online retailer that pioneered the convert-by-hashtag. Amazon and eBay could easily have done this syncing saved billing information, perhaps they will “follow.” Any telecom could leverage carrier billing, or any loyalty program to generate excitement and bump up point-churn.

Of course, with all shiny objects, only time will tell if customers care about buying with hashtags. The more exciting aspect is the ability to buy through an independent channel without enduring the traditional checkout process, or even visiting a website.

So why don’t businesses take advantage of responding to complaints and negative reviews on their own product pages?

4 years ago, we recommended this tactic in an article Thinking Positively About Negative Reviews. It took me 4 years to come across an ecommerce site actually using it. But I recently found 3 – White House Black Market, Aliexpress and Ice.com.

If you’re going to use this tactic, here are some tips to make the most of them:

1. Clarify the issue

In the 2009 article, we cited research from Forrester on customer reactions to negative reviews. 7% indicated they would contact the retailer or manufacturer for clarification of the issues raised in the negative review. Contacting the seller takes time and effort, so though this is a low percentage, a much larger percentage would benefit from a clarification in-line with the review.

Take the opportunity to show off PK (product knowledge) and teach customers how to get the most of their ownership. For example, the Huawei Ascend G was getting a number of negative comments about the ringer volume. The manufacturer released a firmware upgrade that solved the issue. Customers may not read each and every review, or research these problems themselves. A staff spokesperson who can respond to these comments can reassure customers it is a good product can save sales and build trust with your company.

Tip: When staffing your response team, choose individuals who are good at researching and finding solutions to problems.

2. Suggest alternative products

Forrester found 47% of customers would search for alternative products when they read a negative review (26% would buy anyway). Why not help them navigate to a suitable, recommended alternative whilst showing off your team’s product knowledge and building trust?

For example, a 1-star review for the Urban Decay Naked Pallette on Sephora stated “Not enough matte colors. The shimmer/glitter colors just don’t work for me.” A helpful response could be “Yes, this palette leans more towards frost shades than matte. If you prefer matte, I recommend the Stila Neutral Pallette. It has a number of comparable shades with a matte finish” A link to the recommended product not only helps this customer, but educates all other readers about an alternative that addresses this particular concern about the product.

3. Embrace variety

Canned replies are efficient, but don’t come across as authentic once they appear more than once per product.

It’s not always possible to respond to a negative review with a clarification or alternative. (For example, how do you respond to someone who simply didn’t enjoy a book?) Don’t feel obliged to respond to each and every negative review. Use discernment which ones warrant clarification, alternative recommendation or an apology to show your business’ attention to customer complaints.

After encountering a negative review, 18% of customers will look for a retailer/manufacturer that offers a money-back guarantee. Simply reminding customers of your satisfaction guarantee at this point of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) can have a positive effect.

4. Enable community responses

Sometimes your staff doesn’t have the benefit of experiencing the product first-hand. Allowing others to chime in with their own solutions has benefits.

Community responses also educate your customer service staff, and can be re-stated in staff replies.

5. Don’t get defensive / offensive

This may sound obvious, but there’s no room for snark in customer service. Don’t insult the buyer, suggest they don’t know how to use the product, or publicly ask them to change their feedback.

Not only can hosting negative reviews build trust by demonstrating your transparency – they provide an opportunity for you to educate and resolve customer service issues in public, which can translate into more buyer confidence, and ultimately, sales.

Mark Zuckerberg hinted at this functionality at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference last fall:

Search is interesting. We do on the order of 1 billion queries a day and we’re basically not even trying. Today with search, the vast majority of it is people trying to find people, but there’s also a meaningful portion of queries where people are trying to find Pages, brand Pages, other business Pages — so there’s a bunch of that that actually does link to commercial behavior, and I think there’s a big opportunity there and we just need to go do that…

Though the initial rollout is not necessarily commercaily-focused, let’s look at the potential for ecommerce marketing.

Boosting word of mouth

Someone who wants to buy a gift for their teenage niece who may search “What brands do friends of Jacqueline like?” for ideas where to shop.

Merchandising and persona research

An ecommerce marketer could discover what people who like [brand, product, etc] also like, to merchandise emails and home pages, brainstorm cross-sell associations or develop marketing personas.

Facebook advertising strategies

Facebook ads let you target by interest keyword. Discover keywords by searching “Brands that people who like [your brand]” also like,” and target your ads to users who like those brands (or interests, music, TV shows).

HR recruiting

Elastic Path’s HR manager could search “friends of friends who work at Elastic Path that like Java.”

Facebook Graph Search Optimization

The best way to optimize for Graph Search is to simply get as much of your content in the social graph. Beyond adding Like buttons to your home page and product pages, update your fan page frequently with posts that provoke sharing (see our post on Facebook News Feed Optimization for ideas). Explore non-product page content marketing (stay tuned for an upcoming post on content marketing for ecommerce). The point is, get site visitors to share the heck out of your content if you want a chance to be found.

Potential derivative products for businesses

Going back to Zuckerberg’s comment on commercial queries, future updates to Graph Search could potentially include the ability for Business Page administrators to query the social graph of users who’ve liked their Page.

Facebook could also explore native advertising options like promoted search results. For example, if your brand appears in search results, you could pay to have it highlighted or ranked higher (with disclosure, of course).

Advanced fan marketing could enable a business Page administrator to query which fans like a certain TV show or event and send permission-based Facebook Messages to these users with offers (e.g. Coachella style offers, or pre-order Halo 5).

There’s a lot of potential for consumers and marketers, but the big question is, do Facebook users care about Graph Search, or is this just Facebook’s attempt to do something search-y that fizzles out?

I’ve always been a huge fan of filters for category pages, search results and customer reviews. Filters help customers hone in on relevant products and information, reducing research time and frustration, and improve success (and conversion) rates.

Filters shouldn’t be cookie-cutter. Digital goods benefit from their own unique filters. Here are some examples:

Software and Apps

Amazon uses the same review template for its digital goods as it does for physical, which isn’t necessarily optimal.

Many reviews for Angry Birds in Space complain that it is not compatible with Kindle Fire. Filtering by device type would help hone in on which of the more than 300 reviews provide contextual feedback for different device owners.

Apple’s App Store is for one platform, but it gets filters for app release versions right.

Adobe smartly includes filters for product use and skill level.

For Adobe products, vocation / industry may also be a powerful filter. The ability to hone in on reviews from other graphic design professionals, photographers or students helps customers focus on the most relevant reviews.

Media

Digital content like ebooks, music and media typically is reviewed by experts as well as customers. Indigo Books offers a tab for critical reviews.

It also has a tab for social mentions, a creative feature which may also encourage customers to socialize their own reviews when they discover it.

If you carry a variety of digital goods, don’t be afraid to be inconsistent with filters – tailor them to the product. Choose filter attributes based on decision criteria. Reading through customer reviews can give you ideas.