Running a social media ad campaign is not easy. From identifying who your target audience is, what they are looking for, preparing the ad copy, creatives and eCommerce landing pages for every campaign - there’s a lot of work and resources that go in. 

But when it comes to conversions that an online store sees from the traffic coming from social media - it’s lower than 1% in most cases. 

In fact, in our research on the true cost of bounce for eCommerce businesses, we found that brands lose $5.11 to every customer that leaves their site without making a purchase - this is in addition to what you spent running social media ads to drive traffic to the store in the first place. 

So why is it that when consumers are actively using social media to discover or research new products and brands, the conversions on eCommerce landing pages remain low? 

In this post, we’re going to look into some of the leading reasons why eCommerce landing pages do not convert for high-volume social ad campaigns. 

Why is your eCommerce landing page not converting for social media ads 

While there can be several reasons to low conversions on eCommerce landing pages, here are the most pressing issues: 

1. Hard landings 

Most eCommerce businesses are running ads on lifestyle images and videos to capture consumer attention. But when an interested buyer clicks through the ad or shoppable post, they’re taken to one landing page - the chances that this landing page offers the very same part of the ad creative that caught their attention, is usually low. 

Traditional landing pages are not able to tie social content to commerce experiences, which creates hard landings and hence hard choices - either buy the product you see on the site or leave the site. 

2. Contextual disconnect 

We explore brands on social media today because we’re actively interested in consuming lifestyle content. But most landing pages are designed in a much similar way as the product detail pages on an eCommerce website, which creates a contextual disconnect - think about the bag that looked big enough in a viral TikTok but was actually half the size on the product page and you could no longer visualize how it would actually look. 

The contextual disconnect caused between the content that captures the audience's attention and the way we present product information on landing pages can negatively impact a buyer’s experience. 

We also commonly refer to this as the inability to serve multiple consumer intents and interests, that roll back to causing reason 1 - hard landings. 

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3. Platform switching 

While it is important for eCommerce businesses to drive traffic to their website using landing pages to be able to capture customer data, platform switching results in drop-offs too. Imagine browsing through Instagram, coming across a product you like and clicking through to be redirected to another page on the browser - in this case, you had to leave what you were doing on social media and at the same time, now have to open another app (browser) to access the landing page with ease. 

The interruption caused by the platform switching is what often results in drop-offs even before the landing page has fully loaded to present its value proposition. 

4. Slow landing pages 

In a world that likes to shop on the go, slow landing pages can be another reason for the traffic to bounce and not convert. No matter how good the offer or the product being promoted in your social ad campaign was, if the visitors don’t immediately see it on your landing page, they’re leaving without a second thought. 

Studies have found that every additional second it takes for your eCommerce landing page to convert, the more unreliable your brand looks and you risk losing 2% of your conversions. 

5. Lack of continuity 

Think about how you make purchases - you need a product, you see it on social media, click through the ad and land on the website. But do you immediately make the purchase? No - you start to explore what other options the brand has to offer if it’s easy for you to navigate from the page you landed on. 

Most landing pages are designed to serve a business goal - get more pre-orders, get subscriptions, sell a new collection, etc. And that’s why they are built to remove ‘distractions’ to limit the choices a visitor has. While this is a good practice to follow, it may not be the case for most eCommerce businesses because every online shopper seeks ‘options’. By not offering or enabling continuity in their shopping journey, brands limit their own conversion rates. 

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6. Lack of trust 

Did you know that despite actively using social media to explore new brands and products, there are over 54% of online shoppers that prefer making the purchase from brand sites? The reason is simple - they find buying the product from the brand site a lot more secure owing to the number of frauds that occur online. 

When you set up eCommerce landing pages with ‘no distractions’, you also limit the consumer’s ability to explore how legitimate your business is. Additionally, the disconnect from your brand site makes them even more skeptical, leading to lower conversion rates. 

No amount of product review updates and customer testimonials cut it today - while social proof works, it is also now one of the leading things that can be faked online! 

7. Unattractive offer 

If the visuals you use in your social media ad campaigns are great and the eventual offer isn’t, you are definitely losing sales. 

Your eCommerce landing page needs to carry the same message, promise, offer and value that the social media ad campaign promotes. If that is what captured the consumer’s attention, that is exactly what they came looking for and will possibly convert on. 

But at the same time, it is also important to note that not all consumers will see value in the same offer. This is where understanding the psychology behind online shoppers, their purchase motivations and intent at different stages of the funnel, can come in handy to create well-defined audience segments. 

Knowing the different groups of people you’re promoting the brand to, you can tailor the offer made to them. 

The solution to increasing conversions on social media ads? Social storefronts. 

Social storefronts bring alive what we call shopping at the edges. 

The technology is built using artificial intelligence to tap into the best of both worlds - social media and eCommerce. 

It captures the intent and interest an online shopper displays when they interact with social media ad campaign - be it an image, a series of images or a video - and then it quickly matches the items displayed in the same to create a full social storefront that brings together all the products that possibly caught the consumer’s attention. 

Here’s how a social storefront using SimplicityDX works: 

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Now why should eCommerce businesses consider using social storefronts instead of landing pages? 

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why social storefronts offer a much higher conversion rate than the traditional landing pages used in ad campaigns:

1. Soft landings 

The consumer will always see what caught their attention on social media, instead of presenting them with an entirely new view of the product. This softens their landing, making them more likely to stay and explore more. 

2. Contextual connect 

Because social storefronts blend social media content with the commerce experience offered to them, the carry-over of context is much better. They’re able to visualize the product better and tie it back to the campaign instantly, keeping them engaged much longer. 

3. No platform switching 

Social storefronts can launch within the social media platform, which means the buyer does not need to open the brand site in a separate browser. From learning more about the product to exploring the related items, they can do it all within one platform - even completing the purchase. 

4. Fast loading times 

Social storefronts are not built using static elements and blocks. These are powered by AI and are hence much faster to load - which blends into the way we use social media, moving from one post to another. 

5. Continual commerce 

Instead of giving buyers a limited number of options to purchase from, social storefronts are built to serve multiple intents. Since the AI is able to capture all possibilities of what can entice an online shopper, the page is populated with all the related items to the social content. This enables the buyer to explore all the products displayed in the lifestyle image/ video used by a brand to promote their products.

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6. Trust building 

Social storefronts are an extension of your brand site. The experience you offer to a buyer on a social storefront matches the branded experience offered on the website - right from the URL to the way products are displayed on the platforms; this consistency in how the brand is presented, helps build trust immediately. 

The impact of using social storefronts in place of landing pages? Conversions. 

While there is no doubt that landing pages play a crucial role in targeted campaigns where you need to limit the buyer’s options - for example, getting pre-orders on a specific product, gathering feedback, driving subscriptions and similar, they are not built to target all the traffic that comes through social media ad campaigns. 

This is where SimplicityDX Edge Social Storefronts come into play. 

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Brands using social storefronts in place of landing pages, are seeing the following results: 

• Increase in conversion rate on campaigns 
• Higher product discovery 
• Boost in customer engagement 
• Lowered customer acquisition costs 
• Higher ROI from social media 
• Higher ROAS from social media ads 

If you’ve been experiencing lower conversion rates on your high-volume social media ad campaigns, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Check out our infographic The Cost of a Bounce.

It’s time to use social storefronts for campaigns that are targeted at making consumers aware of the products you offer. 

Want to learn more? Book a demo of SimplicityDX today. 

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