Just like I outlined in a previous popular post, “What’s the cost of ‘sharing’?” – conversions might actually benefit from not having social sharing buttons.

Turns out by a test ran by Visual Website Optimizer that when Taloon removed their social sharing buttons, their add-to-cart increased by nearly 12%.

“According to Jani Uusi-Pantti, the number of shares on most of his product pages were zero. While high number of shares and likes act as a positive reinforcement, low number of shares breed distrust in the mind of the customer about both the company and the quality of the product.”

People want to share content, not products. Even if you’re IKEA, Amazon or Target – you’re not going to have thousands of people sharing a product. And while it might work for a hugely popular product like an iPhone, it’s not going to work for the extra USB-cord, the charger or a bumper case.