If you use social media to promote your Shopify store, your target audience will surely be hitting not only your website but also landing on your social media pages. To make the most of these pages, you need to have in mind that the average visitor attention span is limited to 3 seconds. Moreover on Facebook for example, heat map research shows that what people look at first is the cover image. Next comes your profile picture. Only after that your top post might get noticed.
You are probably already guessing it. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ cover images provide an advertising space for you, space which you actually own. With a bit of creativity and design work you can effectively utilize this space to promote your Shopify store.
With 1.3 billion users Facebook is the most widely used social media.
Therefore you should probably start thinking about your Facebook cover photo first. Before you get to it, have in mind that creating a proper Facebook cover image has its perks and there are certain guidelines you need to follow. Here is an excellent article on what you need to know.
Once you know the technicalities, here are some directions you can gear your cover images towards:
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Brand yourself. Take a look at the German online store Blue Tomato, who are showing off their brand in an ingeniously creative way. Their well-established blue tomato logo is drawn with a torch in the dark, hinting of the authenticity of the brand and at the same time connecting with the winter season through a feeling of coseyness, which the fire in the dark creates.
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Show the core benefits of your product. Gnu, one of the world’s premium snowboard brands have an excellent cover photo which tells the whole story. The Gnu snowboards perform equally well on the slopes and on the cross-country terrain and are the choice of one of the best snowboarders in the world: Nicolas Muller.
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Highlight current offers. When promoting your current offers it is a good idea to do so in a highly visible way across all your social media cover photos. The UK retailer River Island have surely done so with their winter sale, which has taken over their facebook, twitter and google+ pages.
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Be seasonal. We already saw how blue-tomato skillfully alluded to the winter season in their cover photo. But here is a more direct example from one of the most famous manufaturers of extreme sports gear: Dakine. Staying up-to-date with the season and the holidays through your cover images shows that your business and the products your sell belong to the present time and creates a feeling of trendiness.
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Show your fun side. This cover photo from Hubspot is telling something about the culture of the company. These guys have a sense of humor. Here is why this matters:
- Humor helps customers remember you. I might not remember the name of this digital marketing agency, but if I had to find them next time I would probably search in Google for “make love not spam”.
- Laugther makes people feel good. When customers laugh because of your funny cover photo they associate this nice feeling with doing business with you.
- A sense of humor is an admirable quality. People who have it, take it lighter on themselves and another. As a result they are more relaxed, make fewer mistakes, communicate more effectively with customers and are more creative.
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Show testimonials. Using testimonials from customers shows the credibility of your store. Here is a photo, which Fiverr, the market place for creative and professional services have, used in the past. But a dedicated testimonial cover photo is not a must. You can always combine the testimonial with any of the above guidelines to create a killer cover photo.
