Social media is finally becoming competitive with search in terms of e-commerce conversion rates.
Our thesis is supported by Monetate's third quarter report, which is based on a random sample of over 600 million online shopping sessions.
- Nearly 1.1% of people referred to an e-commerce site by social media turned into paying customers during the third quarter.
- For comparison, roughly 1.8% of people referred by search converted into customers.
- Email remains the most effective referral channel for e-commerce, with a 2.95% conversion rate in the third quarter.
Analyzing Monetate's data going back a few years, the vast improvement in social media-referred conversion rates comes into clearer focus.
In the second quarter of 2011, email had an impressive conversion rate of roughly 3.7%. Search wasn't far off with a 2.6% conversion rate. Conversions from social sources was a dismal .4% at the time.
It's worth noting that Monetate's sample of e-commerce sites changed halfway through 2012, and perhaps the sample has become more weighted toward merchants that rely on social media referrals. However, Monetate's sample of over 600 million online shopping sessions is large enough to give us a fairly reliable indication of the broader trend.
Retailers are doing an increasingly better job at leveraging social media to acquire new customers. Meanwhile, shoppers are being conditioned to use sites such as Pinterest to discover new consumer products and inform their shopping decisions.
Download the chart and data in Excel.
