It’s 2016, and I believe that Social media is a necessity for most businesses nowadays. I say most, because there are of course exceptions, but I think it’s safe to say that all individuals and businesses will be able to gain some benefit from their use. If there’s one industry though that benefits the most from social media, it’s e-commerce.
Which social networks, and how much so? What is the overall effect of social on e-Commerce?
Also Read: 3 Reasons Why Your Brand Should Still Have a Website
AddShoppers – an On-site Commerce Marketing Platform, analysed 3.4 billion pageviews from over 10,000 stores, and the data from one 495 million shoppers, and found out a few interesting numbers. For one, social influencers in 2015 were female millennials aged 25-34 who logged into websites mainly with Facebook – through social login – to make purchases. Also, they shared stories mostly through Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter… and email, an average of 5 times a month.
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Increase In Social Traffic By Network
In 2015, social action lead to an overall increase in clicks that “referred back to eCommerce sites”. The top platform for this was Facebook (+21%), which is hardly surprising since it is currently driving more traffic to sites than Google itself and it is has become the most effective advertising platform. In second and third place are two surprises – Polyvore (+19.55%) and LinkedIn (+18.27%). Further down the list, are Pinterest (+5.84%), Google+ (+1.12%) and Tumblr with an increase of 0.32%.
Revenue Driven By Network
In terms of the revenue on e-commerce sites that was driven by each network, there are really no surprises here. Facebook again leads the way by a long shot (74.94%), with Twitter (8.75%), Pinterest (6.46%), Google+ (3.20%), and others trailing far behind at 1.65%. The most interesting thing here, was that email (fourth place after Pinterest – 5.96%) drove more revenue than Google+ – this proves wrong whoever thinks that email is dead.
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The AddShoppers’ study does not separate paid from organic, but mentions that this revenue does come from both – organic sharing, and advertising.
Average Order Value Per Network
In terms of average order value per network, this is where we had some big surprises, one of which can of course be explained very easily – LinkedIn tends to send users to corporate services that on average do tend to cost more. With regards to StumbleUpon, I can only guess that it’s because it’s much more based on user-suggestions and people tend to trust it more.
The average orders value from all networks was highest from Linkedin in first place ($206.95) and StumbleUpon ($177.56). From here onward the difference between results was not really that big. With regards for social networks Facebook came at fourth place. Twitter, Polyvore, Tumblr, Pinterest and Google+ trailed behind.
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Top 10 Highest Converting Categories From Social Traffic
The report also looked at which categories were had the highest conversion rates. So, the 10 categories with the highest conversion rates from social traffic are the following:
- Food, Beverages, & Tobacco
- Home & Garden
- Automotive & Vehicles
- Sporting Goods & Outdoors
- Holiday
- Apparel & Clothing
- Music
- Electronics
- Arts & Antiques
- Gifts
These, and much more insightful information bout the subject can be found here.