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.
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