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.
Amazon: up 36 percent YoY
Walmart : down 3 percent YoY
Target : down 2 percent YoY
Macy’s: up 11 percent YoY
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.
Wayfair: up 262 percent YoY
Fitbit: up 261 percent YoY
Beats by Dr. Dre: up 212 percent YoY
Fanatics.com: up 211 percent YoY
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.
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