Social Media Lags Search, Email in E-Commerce Conversions

Social media is lagging as a traffic source to e-commerce websites and as a driver of online purchases, despite increased brand investment, according to a recent report by Monetate. The Ecommerce Quarterly report, which analyzed a random sample of more than 500 million online shopping experiences in the first quarter of this year, found that social media represented just 1.55 percent of all e-commerce traffic to top sites, far behind search (31.43 percent) and trailing email (2.82 percent). Moreover, social media platforms overall had a conversion rate of less than three-quarters of 1 percent (.71 percent), though this number varied by network.