Kathy Woolverton's Blogs

Measuring social commerce
Social commerce is purchase transactions that are driven through sharing on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and through “email friends” application. Social commerce is when friends refer, recommend, or "Like" your product or service, and share with others they know.

Are you making it very easy for people to recommend your products and services? Do the pages of your website, and the products in your e-commerce have Share or Like, yet?

So why would this addition make a difference?

There are a number of reasons this makes a big difference to enhance your business income:

- Each "Share" or "Like" refers and recommends your business to their friends. Each "Share" that a person does, posts a note re your product /service with a link to your site`s page to where they are sharing with their friends and collegues. These are sharing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social sharing sites.

- Each "Share" or "Like" increases your rank in the search engines such as Google.You want to be found on the first page of the search engines. Each Share or Like automatically creates a link to your site from a high profile site. Each new link to your site helps build your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rank.

The social Web fuels the conversation for recommendations and sharing. This conversation isn’t new, but we are now able to track the resulting transactions with unprecedented granularity.

Social commerce is purchase transactions that are driven through sharing on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and through “email friends” application.

In one case study “Social Commerce: A First Look at the Numbers,” Eventbrite shows angible data to quantify the value and impact of social media in driving eCommerce.

Key findings
The key findings of Eventbrite's analysis include:

- Sharing equals transactions: Dollars per share
When someone shares an event with their friends through social media, this action results in real dollars. Most recent data shows that over the past 12 weeks, one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43, a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90, and a share through ”email friends” equals $2.34. On an aggregate level across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and email share tool, each share equals $1.78 in ticket sales. They saw this number improve every week with the most recent four-week average equaling $1.87.

- It’s extremely sticky: Visits per share
The hyper-relevancy of the social graph breeds deeper engagement, greater sales and stickier audiences. For Eventbrite, Facebook is now the #1 referring site for traffic to the company’s site, surpassing Google as people discover events that their friends are sharing and they click through to find out more. On average each Facebook share drove 11 visits back to Eventbrite.com. Averaging across all channels, one share drove over 7 visits back to Eventbrite.com.

- It’s happening everywhere, across all sizes and types of events: Consistency of sharing
Sharing is consistent across event size. Sharing occurs at the same rate an event has 10 or 10,000 people. Classes/workshops and networking events have the most share activity, followed by fundraisers, conferences, and music events.

What it Looks Like:

Summary: Social commerce is the next big thing
Social commerce takes online commerce to a new level. It marries the natural act of sharing and socializing with friends and the act of buying something online. Social commerce brings together social promotion and transactions into a single, unified experience, which breaks the old rules of eCommerce and demands new metrics. And the exciting news is that this is just the beginning.

Ready to add social commerce to your website to increase sales? Contact Synergy today at info@synergycc.com or call 604-681-0516.

We’re also keen to hear your thoughts and feedback on the subject. Post your website below, and we'll check it out and provide you with some ideas that would enhance your business. Comment below on what worked for you.

Using software that is designed specifically for your operations makes a huge difference to your productivity. Our goal is to continually work with our clients to create the best tailor-made solution to fit their individual needs.

The following is a showcase of one of our recent projects which is an example of how we can help save you time, alleviate unnecessary stress, and help to grow and improve your business.

When the Midwifery Department at UBC first started, they purchased the admissions system that was previously designed and used by the Faculty of Medicine – Dean’s Office at UBC. At that point, the Midwifery Department was brand new, so their specific needs were not clear.

One of Synergy's senior programmer/analysts, Tasia Bantassios, headed up the project, working with Elaine Carty, Director of the Midwifery Department at UBC.

Our recommendation was to start small and then add additional features as needed. We worked together and customized the application to fit the Midwifery department.

After a couple of years of running the department Elaine, identified that “We required an admissions database that would allow us to enter into the system all the information about our applicants to the program.” says Elaine. “We needed an organized way to connect our students, clinical preceptors, hospital and faculty, and then a way to communicate with them efficiently. The goal was to be able to link all these people together and have an ongoing record of those linkages.”

“We wanted a system that would calculate different scores to determine the top 40 students we’re bringing in to interview and after the interview, to determine the top scores for admission. We needed the system to help us easily send letters to all of the applicants about whether or not they’re admitted, granted an interview, or whether they’ve been rejected or accepted.“

Tasia custom designed new interfaces and reports. After approval, they were developed and implemented. Not much effort was required to learn the new system as Elaine and the Program Administrator had input during the design and development. At the end of the project, Synergy also provided additional training and continues to be available for phone support.

The final result was a database that addresses all of the department’s needs. For processing applicants, it performs all the different calculations for ranking applicants, produces applicant ranking reports and generates applicant status letters. It tracks the necessary demographic and contact information for applicants, students, preceptors and clinical placements.

Now all the data is stored in one common place and the relational database (RDBMS) technology gives automatic safeguard against duplicate entry.

The new system has made a huge improvement to their business operations. Now the admissions process is much more streamlined, reduces paperwork and eliminates any chance of error.

“We’re less likely to miss steps now” says Elaine. ”Like for instance, sometimes you would write a letter, and someone else wouldn’t know where it was filed. This system allows us to have a quick record of what we’ve sent and when we sent it. It centralizes the paper trail and organizes it for you. We were mainly looking for efficiency and accuracy in our work. This database also produces more professional looking materials for us to send out.”

Purchase Order System

After the successful implementation of the first project, a second system was created to automate another time consuming part of their business – managing purchase orders.

Elaine finds the new financial shadow system extremely useful. It is a mirror of the larger UBC system but is the department’s own separate system. It enables the Midwifery department to accurately determine expenses and to check them against the central UBC database.

“We now have more up-to-date budgeting and forecasting abilities”, says Elaine. “Our Program Administrator is also pleased with the financial program. In the past, things would sometimes take a while to get through the general UBC system, but now we don’t have to wait the month or two, it just happens.”

Results

These applications continue to evolve as the department continues to grow and identify additional areas that can be streamlined.

One of the key elements to the success of this project was the client’s attitude of putting so much trust into the system and in Synergy's ability to produce something they wanted.

“They were enthusiastic about doing it” says Tasia. “They were helpful, took the time to give us all the information we needed and thoroughly explained their requirements. The Program Administrator was extremely dedicated to getting the project done and this enabled us to work well together and to make this project a success “.

Elaine is pleased with the final results. “Overall it improves the efficiency and accuracy of the admissions program. There was excellent collaboration with Synergy and we feel we have a strong communication with them. They were very accommodating and interested in our project and in getting us to the place we wanted to go.”

“With Synergy, we don’t feel rushed. We get to try it out in our own time and they have been very responsive in working with any glitches. We will continue to work with them, as our satisfaction level is high. By doing small projects, we’re learning the potential for other things. Often you don’t know what you can do until you start to work with something. Then it gives you ideas for other ways that the technology can be helpful.”

What would you like to improve within the systems that manage your business operations?