Social media traffic to e-commerce sites: Facebook takes the lead

Illustration

Facebook is an absolute leader among social networks in terms of bringing people to online stores. Furthermore, it even has the highest conversion rate. This is the main conclusion of a study by Shopify, a company providing online stores. They collected data by measuring the traffic on their clients' rented e-commerce sites.

The dominance of Facebook itself would not be so surprising if it was not as much as  85% of orders received from the total of all social networks. Such a high number was not expected even by rock fans of this marketing channel.

Shopify uses for support of their stores a variety of social media, some of which are not yet widespread in the Czech Republic. The survey included Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Vimeo, Vine, Hacker News, and Polyvore. Let's look at some other interesting findings:

  • Facebook leads 63% of all visitors who come from social networks.
  • Pinterest brings more visitors than Twitter (13% vs. 10.5%).
  • The highest value of orders came from Polyvore, followed closely by Instagram.
  • The highest conversion rate is 1.85%. It is achieved only on Facebook.
  • In terms of the increase in the number of orders from individual networks in 2013, the biggest increase was by Reddit, followed by Facebook and LinkedIn.
  • The average value of a LinkedIn resp. of Google+ order is about 20, respectively. 30% lower than the average value of an order from Facebook.
  • Except Facebook, conversion rate is higher than 1% on Vimeo, YouTube (both 1.16%) and Instagram (1.08%).
  • In some sectors, the dominance Facebook is not so great. Eg. antiques and collectibles are clearly dominated by Pinterest (74% of orders received from all social networks).

This study may bring a wide range of marketers to rethink their social media strategy. The authors even claim that if you are in a retail sector, where the dominance of Facebook is not so strong, it is advisable to use a combination of another social medium along with a Facebook page.

-th-

Article source SocialMouths - blog providing advice in social media marketing
Read more articles from SocialMouths