L2: Social media still accounts for a small portion of retail website traffic

Social media marketing has been a hot topic in the past few years. Many e-commerce companies have also actively engaged in social media, hoping to obtain social traffic and conversions. However, research from L2 Think Tank found that the traffic from social sites on retailers' websites is still very low.

In the traffic source composition of US retail websites, search still dominates, followed by direct visit traffic, and traffic from social media accounts for only 2.4%.

Despite this, retailers are still investing heavily in social media. L2 found that retailers are increasingly using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram.

Different social platforms bring different traffic to different types of sites, which depends on the resource investment level of different industries, as well as the industry and the attributes of the users themselves. Facebook has the greatest impact on the watch and jewelry industry, accounting for 76% of social traffic; YouTube has the best effect in the beauty and skin care category, with a traffic share of 27%, probably because users looking for these products also watch videos about how to make up and dress up; Pinterest has a greater influence in the home and gift categories, with a social share of 31%.

via: eMarketer