A WEBONAIR by Experian covering the post-recession UK advised small businesses to be brave and incorporate social media onto their retail websites.
It was a chance to talk about the report out in May and the fact that social network sites overtook traffic to retail sites in January.
The key for retailers and small businesses is to bring social networking onto their sites and bring user generated content for all to see.
Small businesses are the most at risk (10-100 employees) across the country in the recession and consumers are increasingly disloyal.
Users are highlighting a focus of green issues and businesses must really work the trust loyalty lever/recommndations from friends to get a competitive edge.
Robin Goad, from Hitwise, said online behaviour is still different in the regions in terms of what sites and brands they search for. Liverpool people for example were looking 3 or 4% people searching for local news and education as well as sport. local specific content.
In the retail sector how they search for brands and how it reflects the retail strength in those areas is important.
Looking at green behvaiour, people are increasingly looking for recycling and especially mobile phone recycling and this reflects the financial incentive to do phone recycling: green issues coincide with wanting to save money.
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It is essential for businesses to do what consumers want in your local area and make sure you are meeting those needs.
Online it is important to note that social networks and media, bbc and newspapers, has been growing faster in terms of traffic than retail sites. The recession has brought into focus the transactional versus online sites - social networks overtook retail in january this year.
It shows that people are getting very used to user generated content.
How people react to twitter, videos on youtube and transactional sites eg user reviews and recommendations is really important. What this means is that social networking and retail need to covertly integrate.
People don't want to be sold to?
Social networking is increasingly being brought into commercial sites so that people can talk and the business can brin customers in. If the consumer is used to netowrking then they need the opportunity to do that on the retail site.
A company that can harness the traffic from media sites such as twitter or facebook will have the advantage.
Integrating social media and user generated into their own sites has been successful for example with
screwfix. This is a very successful site at building an online forum where people talk about plumbing and painting.
It is also about sorting product results, so highly rated by consumers are featured better. Consumers would much rather hear what people want not the spin from the company.
Post recession UK is a time to be brave.
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