Today Shopify released their latest commerce report for 2014. There were two charts in this report that I thought I would share and draw some conclusions from.

The first relates to social media as a tool for attracting sales. In 2014 we saw the biggest increase in social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest and Instragram bringing sales to online store. These platforms are a viable channel for bringing traffic to your website that converts. Google Organic Search and Paid Search like Ad Words are still the biggest sources of traffic and sales. But social media is growing, especially Facebook which holds the lions share as the graph shows below.

Our advice is to not lose your mojo for social media. You need to keep it up. Keep producing content, variety in your content and keep trying to get engagement. Experiment with different kinds of content until you see the which content encourages your customers to 'like' and 'share'. If you are not getting 'likes' then change the content or get some help for someone with social media experience.

The most popular times, at least on Shopify stores to buy online are weekdays between 12-2pm, lunchtime and on Sunday evenings, when people have down time. This obviously makes the most sense and it is what we have suspected for a long time. Its great to see data that supports it.

So what does this mean for your business. Time your sales related posts and advertising to appear just before or around lunch time each day and then again on Sunday evenings. You can try posts that entice them during other times but then hit home with a great offer during these times when they have the greatest propensity to post. This posts should then result in great conversions on your website.

We would love to hear from online stores who change the timing of their posts to align with this. Did it work? If so by how much? Do you need help creating content for social media? Then contact us for help.