If you have an e-commerce website, small social media icons (present next to your products or in the shopping cart) may be hurting your business. It has been found that as your website includes more social features, visitors are less likely to buy products or services. Older buyers and boomers will find the features more unpleasant and are likely to leave your site. Here are some tips to make your website more attractive:

Social media icons are distracting

Buyers should be made to focus on just one thing: get them to press the “buy” button. Don’t let them move on to social media features. Once an item purchase is made, they may be asked to follow the business on social media. However, this step should only be done when the purchase is made.

Instead of shopping cart gadgets, it could provide clues to a powerful shopping incentive. These are:

How fast the item will be delivered.

· Remaining quantity of the item.

When the sale is over.

Social media is a detour for new customers

One thing you need to be careful about is not asking your site visitor to like or follow you on social media. It is not possible for a visitor to validate your product unless they have never met you.

Negative social proof is a sales killer

Placing social sharing icons next to items is akin to playing with fire, especially if the items don’t generate social engagement.

Twitter is the weakest buying tool

Use Twitter to engage your visitors, who are loyal customers, in conversation and news sharing, but it should not be a channel of entry. Since Twitter does not lead to a site for any purchases, what is done is simply tweeting from your website. Therefore, it should not be used as an input channel.

Social media isn’t that bad

Using paid social media effectively to drive more traffic to a branded site generally results in good results, especially on LinkedIn for B2B and Facebook for B2C. This is because with a combination of the right audience and the right message, the result is sure to be a success.

So you have two important things to think about: driving traffic to your website using strong channels, and helping to maximize conversations. To do this, use paid search, email, Facebook paid ads, and direct mail to drive the right visitors to your website. Test regularly and treat new visitors differently from loyal buyers.

So be sure to make changes to your home page, as well as product pages, by removing those pesky icons. It incorporates functions that users would like to do. Highlight the latest sale, best seller, or newest inventory.