What’s the goal of your website?
It’s a simple question, but one that needs to be asked.
The tricky thing with websites is that the true goal of the website can kind of get lost.
With most websites there is one overall goal along with other supplementary goals.
The Goal Of Your Website
The goal for most websites is to convert website traffic into paying customers.
I like to think of a website as an online salesperson.
In real life, salespeople meet with potential customers and go through the sales process until the potential customer is ready to make a purchase. That process is different for just about all businesses, but they do follow similar paths.
The potential customer asks questions. The salesperson answers questions. The salesperson keeps the conversation focused and moving toward the end goal while keeping the potential customer happy, comfortable and confident.
The salesperson often uses supplementary goals along the way to help move the process along, but rarely does the salesperson send the potential customer off on a tangent that would take the potential customer off the ideal path.
A supplementary goal might be to get the person to ask about the people at the selling company. It might be to get that person to ask about the details of a product or to ask about others that have purchased the product.
But the salesperson really won’t tell the potential customer to leave the sales process to do something else.
Social Sharing Buttons On Your Website
In the last 5-7 years or so the idea of putting social sharing buttons on websites has become important.
These are the buttons that allow visitors to share your content; usually specific pages on the site.
It’s common for sharing buttons to appear on blog posts. Readers can find the posts and easily share the post on Twitter, Facebook or the other social channels.
It’s also common for ecommerce sites to include sharing buttons on their product pages.
And you’ll find sharing buttons on other pages.
But should those sharing buttons be there?
The thought is that these sharing buttons are distracting visitors from the goal of the website.
The argument for social sharing buttons is that it can bring more traffic and more potential customers to your site, but new evidence is saying that the impact of that might not be as much as we think.
People Don’t Need Sharing Buttons
It’s also important to note that many people don’t click on the social sharing button.
They don’t need to and some (maybe most) people would rather just copy the URL (the link) and paste that onto their preferred social channel (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
The social channels have made it pretty easy to share content. You can copy the URL and paste it on the feed and the vital info like the title and description will show when you share it.
And other people have extensions on their browsers or phones that make it easy to share an item on Facebook or other social channel. In that instance too the social sharing button isn’t necessary.
Removing Distractions From Your Website
It’s good to audit your website regularly. I recommend at least annually and perhaps even every six months depending on the size and nature of your business.
Your site is never “done”. You’re always learning more about who your customer is and how your sales process works.
I like to start with reviewing the sales process as it works in person.
If you’re entirely an online business then talk to a customer or two or pay someone to go through the process as a customer and observe and ask them questions as they go through the process.
Focus on the questions the person has along the way. Focus on how well your website answers those questions.
And also focus on distractions.
Potential distractions could include social sharing buttons. You might find that including social sharing buttons on your product pages are not worth having and cause more harm than they provide benefit.
Conclusion
Yes, it seems good to get social shares, but it’s only good as long as it doesn’t distract from the main goal of your website.
There are other ways to get social shares to build your online profile that don’t distract your website visitors.
When you have visitors on your site they’re already into your sales funnel. You don’t need them to take a step backward in the funnel.
And you can still evaluate where social sharing buttons could be better located. Perhaps on the confirmation page after a customer makes a purchase. They’re leaving your site anyway so why not have them share the item at that point.
Or perhaps on the review confirmation page. This way the person has received the item. You could ask them to share it on social media at that point.
