This article was written on Apr 6th, 2012
Here is an interesting study… The University of Miami School of Business Administration, in an attempt to discover how the subconscious mind can be influenced by making buying decisions came to a revealing conclusion:
Pages that displayed the Facebook “Like” Button or a Twitter icon had more sales than other pages without these icons.
It’s all about brand recognition and you don’t get them bigger than Facebook and Twitter and it is this association that triggers the subconscious decision to make a purchase in consumers who might not have done so without these icons.
The way this works is that it triggers potential customer to think that the presence of these icons may mean that the product they are viewing is indeed “monitored” by the social network giants which then prompts the customer to relax any prior reluctance to purchase.
The bottom line is that if you are interested in increasing your sales, then you should be aware that the inclusion of these social media icons in your web design strategy could have a significant impact on your prospective customers.
The study also underlines that by displaying these icons on your page, customers who might otherwise have been shy (reluctant) to make a purchase due to the “embarrassing” nature of the product were indeed more likely to buy the product, because of the presence of the facebook and twitter icons. ( An “embarrassing” product might be: a “compression” underwear for women, acne products for men….)
The study, relatively small in scope was done with the help of some 200 participants tasked with exploring products in an online shopping environment.
Key findings:
The likelihood of making a purchase of a product that is thought of as being desirable (sportswear, fragrances) increased by 25 % when they were accompanied with the social media icons.
The pattern of purchasing behavior with regards to desirable or non desirable (embarrassing) product which increase with the presence of these icons suggests that these symbols have indeed penetrated the public on an subconscious level