Social media is no more a place to just interact with friends and peers. It has evolved as a marketing hub for brands to attract shoppers across the globe. We know that more than 48% of shopaholics prefer social media sites to plan for their holiday shopping. Social networking sites like Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) and Pinterest drive more than 15% of overall referral traffic to websites. In case of referal traffic from social networks for B2B websites, LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE:LNKD) is a clean winner with 64% share. A majority of social media sites are innovating themselves to attract users and persuade them to engage with brands. Pinterest’s related pins seem to act as an extra aid to drive referral traffic for e-commerce sites. Twitter’s visual feed is also likely to benefit marketers of various brands and attract users to shop more.
The study which tracked more than 689 million shopping sessions between January and September 2013 by global leaders in omni-channel optimisation RichRelevance, reported that social media titan Facebook dominated with more than 60% of shopping traffic for retail sites, followed by polyvore with 20% and Pinterest with 15%. A few other interesting highlights from the report are:
- Facebook leads with 4.31 million social shopping sessions followed by Polyvore and Pinterest with 1.41 million and 1.1 million, respectively. Polyvore, a social commerce website with more than 17 million users, has emerged as a top contender for driving shopping traffic to retail websites.
- Close to 60% of shopping traffic from social networking sites to retail websites comes from Facebook. Next in line is Polyvore with 20% share, Pinterest with 15% share followed by Twitter with a mere 5% share.
- If we analyse an average conversion rate, yet again Facebook leads at 2.69%, ahead of Polyvore (1.17 %), Pinterest (0.96 %) and Twitter (0.49%).
- Pinterest generates about $2.1 million sales from social sessions. Facebook generates a massive $10.7 million, Polyvore produced about $6.34 million sales and last in line was Twitter with $93,000.
- If we consider the average order value per session (AOV), Polyvore drives a maximum AOV of $383.34 followed by Pinterest with $199.16. Facebook recorded about $99.27 and Twitter about $58.02.
