Social media sites have proven enormously helpful to online merchants and the eCommerce industry at large. As is the case in every field, a top dog of sorts eventually emerges. But in the battle between Pinterest and Facebook, which truly best serves eCommerce and its many purveyors?
This week, the folks behind a hugely popular international fashion accessories marketplace known as Boticca.com published a new case study with the findings of a Pinterest vs. Facebook showdown.
And from the looks of it, the new kid on the block is gaining a leg up on the social networking giant that’s about to go public.
Pinterest Pins Facebook for Profitability
The study in question was based on a sample of 50,000 visits to the Boticca.com website from Pinterest and another sample of 50,000 visits from Facebook during a 30-day period. Naturally, the research delves into user engagement and purchasing tendencies based on the social network that led them to the site in the first place.
“In the past month,” Boticca reveals, “Pinterest has emerged as the brand’s number one social outlet in terms of sales.” Boticca admits that it has been driving traffic from ‘Pin It’ buttons on every product page and branded Pinterest boards, often uploaded in conjunction with the website editorial calendar and “corresponding to current trends. “
They Pin… But Do They Spend?
Interestingly enough, the information culled from the Boticca.com experiment shows that Pinterest users are just as happy to spend as they are to “pin.”
“Average order value of sales driven by Pinterest to the Boticca.com website has been $180,” the company’s data shows. That’s 10% higher than the Boticca.com overall site average and 90% higher than the AOV of sales driven by Facebook
All told, at least according to this case study, Pinterest drives more sales than Facebook or any other social media channel. To date, the youthful social networking portal known as Pinterest has already “influenced” 10% of transactions on Boticca.com in the past month. Only 7% of transactions are believed to have been born by a push from Facebook – the much larger and more well-known of the two.
This latest report clearly casts further doubt on Facebook’s future as a social commerce hub.
“There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop,” says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. “But it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.”
Pinterest, on the other hand, seems like a more natural conduit for online and mobile commerce. Users are supposed to promote – or “pin” – the products and general things that they like. When those items are for sale, other Pinterest users are exposed to a sales opportunity. And it now appears as though that exposure is leading to an explosion in revenue for the merchants who have wisely plugged into Pinterest.
Source: Bottica
