Social Commerce for the Socially-Awkward Store Owner

You know you should be doing “social commerce,” because everyone keeps telling you how good it is for your eCommerce store.

But are you so overwhelmed by the array of social media platforms out there that you feel a little “socially awkward?”

Never fear. Here’s the Social Cheat Sheet for WooCommerce: just install the extensions, add your accounts and you will be a social (commerce) butterfly in no time.

WooCommerce Wishlists

Remember when you were a child and your wishlists were never quite fulfilled? (“No sweetheart, you can’t have your own horse…”).

Well now you can make your customers’ dreams come true. WooCommerce Wishlists allows your customers to create wishlists for all sorts of reasons: birthdays, wedding registries, upcoming holidays, or just for fun.

The social side of Wishlists comes into play when customers share their lists with friends and families through social media networks. Both guests and users on your site can use WooCommerce Wishlists to share through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (the ultimate wishlist channel) and email.

The price for a single site licence is $79, up to 5 sites is $99, and up to 25 sites will cost you $199.

WooCommerce Instagram

Product photography is important for your eCommerce store, but so is showcasing your products (or services) being used by real people. Instagram is a great tool for achieving these goals.

With WooCommerce Instagram you can display photos of your products on your eCommerce site by tagging your Instagram photos with a specific hashtag.

A Single Site Licence starts at $29. Up to 5 sites is $79, while up to 25 sites will set you back $129.

Facebook Tab

Facebook announced their new “buy” button last week, but WooCommerce users have been doing “fCommerce” for a while now.

The Facebook Tab extension allows you to sell your products via your Facebook page.

Integrating WooCommerce with Facebook, the extension creates a tab on the left hand side of your Facebook page. Your customers can view your products and add them to their cart from within Facebook. Customers are then taken to your site to complete the order.

A single site licence is $49, up to 5 sites is $79, and up to 25 sites is $149.

Storeya

Speaking of Facebook, you can also use Storeya’s integration with WooCommerce to import your WooCommerce store into Facebook.

Use Storeya to customize your Facebook store and keep it synced with your main site. The integration also includes social media sharing with Pinterest, Twitter and Google+.

Storeya’s accounts start free for one campaign and a maximum of 20 products shown in your store. There are then “monthly plans” of $9.99 ($119.88 annual), $24.99 ($299.88 annual) and $69.99 ($839.88 annual) (you will be billed annually) depending on what your store needs.

AddShoppers WooCommerce Integration

AddShoppers offers social commerce apps that your customers can use to sign in using their social accounts. They also offer retargeting apps, social rewards apps, and purchase sharing buttons on your site.

AddShoppers pricing depends on the number of unique monthly visits your site receives. If it’s 999 or less, you are in the community tier and AddShoppers is free. From 1,000-5,000 unique monthly visits, AddShoppers is $17 per month and the price goes up from there, depending on traffic.

Social Sharing Buttons for WooCommerce

If all of the above overwhelms you, and you want to start simple with your social media, why not just add some social sharing buttons to your WooCommerce store? There are a few different options.

• Terry Tsang has built a WooCommerce Facebook Share Like Button which you can download from WordPress.org. The plugin implements Facebook share and like buttons on the product page. There is flexibility to customise how you use the plugin.
• Terry also sells a pro version—the WooCommerce Social Buttons Pro plugin—which includes share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Fancy and Svpply. A single site costs $39, while unlimited sites is $89.
• Another plugin you can download from WordPress.org has a rather friendly (if long) title: Really Simple Facebook Twitter Share Buttons. The plugin allows you to show a wide range of social buttons above or below your posts.

Social Rewards

You can encourage your loyal customers to advocate for your brand or site using Social Rewards. Offer them rewards based on events or actions, such as signing up, making a purchase, referring a friend, or signing up using their social accounts. Social Rewards costs between $69 and $199.

Social Rebate

A similar service, Social Rebate, also offers an integration with WooCommerce. Customers can share your brand across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn in exchange for reductions in their purchase prices, based on the traffic they bring you. Social rebate lets you download their software for free, but will charge 15% of the Social Rebates claimed by your customers.

Time to Get Started

Clearly there is a heck of a lot to keep up with in the social commerce landscape! But one of the advantages of WooCommerce is that there are so many social media extensions available.

While may take a bit of time to research all of the options, the great part is that once you figure out what you need, the developers have done the hard work of building the extensions and integrations for you.

There’s never been a better time to take your head out of the social-commerce sand and get started.