Facebook And YouTube: Top Social Traffic Sources For E-Commerce In December

Driving 5.32 percent of traffic to retailer websites over the holiday season, Facebook accounted for more than half of all social referrals to retailers in the Hitwise 500, according to data shared by Experian.

YouTube came in second with 1.65 percent of upstream traffic to retailers. Facebook’s share of referral traffic increased a relatively modest 38 percent.  YouTube’s share grew 55 percent.

Only Yahoo Answers sent less traffic to retailer sites year-over-year. Yet, though Google+, Instagram, Reddit and Tumblr each drove big percentage increases in traffic, each sent less traffic than Yahoo Answers. Google+ and Reddit each sent 0.04 percent of traffic, and Instagram and Tumblr sent just 0.03 percent of traffic to retailers this holiday season.

Retailers With Highest Share of Traffic From Social

The retailers with the highest share of social traffic, not surprisingly were Amazon and the sites of big box stores. However, only Amazon saw a substantial lift (36 percent) year-over-year in traffic from social sites. Walmart and Target actually saw their share of social traffic fall this December.

1. Amazon: up 36 percent YoY
2. Walmart :  down 3 percent YoY
3. Target :  down 2 percent YoY
4. Macy’s: up 11 percent  YoY
5. Best Buy: up 3 percent YoY

Retailers With The Biggest Increases In Social Referrals

Experian also shared which retail websites experienced the highest increases in social referral traffic. Wayfair, Fitbit, Beats by Dr. Dre, Fanatics.com and Dermstore each saw triple-digit increases in traffic referrals from social.

1. Wayfair: up 262 percent YoY
2. Fitbit: up 261 percent YoY
3. Beats by Dr. Dre: up 212 percent YoY
4. Fanatics.com: up 211 percent YoY
5. Dermstore: up 150 percent YoY

In fact, Facebook was the number two source of traffic to Wayfair in December, accounting for 12 percent of upstream traffic. YouTube was the second biggest source of traffic for Beats by Dre with 16 percent, a 487 percent increase year-over-year.

Social Third Biggest Referral Source For Retailers

Social networking and forum sites were the third largest driver of referral traffic, behind search and shopping sites, in December. Traffic from social grew 39 percent year-over-year in December 2013. Shopping engines saw their upstream traffic increase by 11 percent in December. Search engines, though still by far the biggest traffic referrer to retailers, with over 40 percent share, sent 13 percent less traffic to retailers this past December versus December 2012.

For more on the impact of search engines for retailers this holiday season, see our coverage Report: Search Engines Drove More Than 40% Of Traffic To Retail Sites During 2013 Holiday Season on Search Engine Land.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.