E-Commerce and Social Media
One of the important points that determine the position of e-commerce on the internet is the traffic it has. The higher the traffic, then the popularity of the e-commerce in cyberspace increased. If compared to conventional business, then ‘traffic’ is people who stop at the store. Of course, more and more visitors are generally interpreted as something positive.
Considering the importance of traffic for e-commerce and the use of social media, the digital tactics of increasing traffic via social media have become popular in recent years. Simply put, the mechanism is to reference websites or apps on social media platforms. This tactic proved successful in increasing traffic. Studies by Shareaholic in 2015 as quoted from Forbes, said that social media is the number one referral (referral) to the entire website, including e-commerce. About 31% of referral traffic comes from social media. This figure is certainly a dynamic move, but the significant role of social media as a reference will remain an essential point for e-commerce.
Social Media Referral in Indonesia
From the above premises, it is interesting to know the relationship of traffic on e-commerce and social media referrals in Indonesian. According to SimilarWeb statistics collected from July 2016 to August 2017, there were 9.158 billion visits to 10,000 online shopping sites in Indonesia.
There are six social media raised in this study: Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. The six are on average contributing 3.40% in the same period as referrals to online shopping sites. This means roughly 311 million visits in the period July 2016 – August 2017 are sourced from social media referrals.
Facebook is still the most influential social media in terms of referrals. This is certainly related to their position as the number one social media in Indonesia. But the trend of Facebook as a traffic referral has tended to decline in recent months, after having been at 2.56% in January 2017, down to 1.51% in December 2017.
Right in the second position, there is Youtube figure that went up and down, and perched at 1.40% in December 2017. The most interesting is WhatsApp platform, which has experienced consistent and significant improvements. It only takes one year for WhatsApp (from 0% in December 2016) to be in the third position of a significant social media referrer. WhatsApp percentage increased from January 2017, which was 0.08%, to 0.24% in December 2017. This is three times the previous number.
However, this should be seen as a golden opportunity. That there is still so much space to increase traffic with social media referrals tactics.