LinkedIn Drives The Highest Per Order Value In E-Commerce

In 2016, social media is a necessity for most businesses nowadays. There are of course exceptions, but 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, especially for LinkedIn.

Which social networks, and how much so? What is the overall effect of social on e-Commerce?

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.

Increase In Social Traffic By Network

In 2015, social action leads 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 Tumblrwith 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.

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 on LinkedIn

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 order’s value from all networks was highest from Linkedin in the first place ($206.95) and StumbleUpon ($177.56). From here onward the difference between results was not really that big. With regards to social networks, Facebookcame at fourth place. Twitter, Polyvore, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Google+ trailed behind.