Start selling with Shopify today

Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools and services you need to start, run, and grow your business.

Which Social Media Platforms Drive the Most Sales? [Infographic]

Mar 5, 2014
2 minute read

Business owners often wonder about the expected ROI of an effectivesocial media marketing strategy. Is my Facebook pageactually driving sales? Is all this tweeting really doing anything for my bottom line? Should I be on Pinterest and Instagram?

Well it turns out, when it comes to ecommerce,being social matters.

To better understand how social media is impacting the ecommerce industry, we analyzed data from 37 million social media visits that led to 529,000 orders.

Here's some interesting social media statistics we uncovered:

Facebook dominates as a source ofsocial traffic and sales. Nearly two thirds of all social media visits to Shopify stores come from Facebook. Plus, an average of 85% of all orders from social media come from Facebook.
Orders fromRedditincreased 152% in 2013.
Perhaps most interesting and surprising was community style sitePolyvorewhich is generating the highest average order value ahead of Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Also noteworthy in this category is Instagram which is also generating higher average orders than those same sites. This is especially impressive considering the only clickable links in Instagram are those in profile bio's.
Facebook has thehighest conversion rate for all social media ecommercetraffic at 1.85%

In addition to these stats, we've also analyzed specific industries to determine which platforms are performing well for them. You can check out all of our findings in the infographic below. Please click on the image to view it in full-screen.