Merchants that bave been slow to adopt social media support and functionality within their shopping carts are now officially late to the game.

According to Merchant Circle, 70 percent of local US small-to-medium size business owners are actively using social media marketing to promote their businesses. Couple that with a report from McKinsey Global Institute which indicates that 63 percent of companies using social media say it has increased marketing effectiveness (playing an important role in actual sales) and merchants simply have no reason not to do what they can on the social media front right now.

Shopping cart software and service provider Volusion is aiming to supports its merchants’ social initiatives by releasing several social media features into its platform that aim to help clients connect their ecommerce stores to popular social media channels.

Features include administrative integration with Facebook and Twitter (Volusion clients will be able to post content to the social networks), the addition of the Facebook Send Button so shoppers can share a stores products, and a tool that helps merchants manage YouTube videos within product pages.