14 DAY TRIAL // A survey commissioned by ChannelAdvisor and conducted by Redshift Research concludes that Facebook is the best social network on which retailers can advertise and sell their products.
The study was carried out on 200 retailers, 100 in the US and 100 in the UK. All the companies surveyed had an online store, while only 74% had a classic brick-and-mortar store through which they sold their products.
Most of them (72%) sold products directly to consumers, whilst no more than 40% sold to distributors, wholesalers, and other companies.
Facebook created the most sales conversions on social media
According to the survey data, 64% of all companies answered that Facebook delivered the most sale conversions out of all the social networks they advertised their products on.
Twitter was a distant second with 19%, followed by Instagram with 9%, and Pinterest with 5%.
Respondents also reported having a constant presence on the aforementioned social media channels as follows: Facebook - 89%, Twitter - 70%, Instagram 45%, and Pinterest 41%.
Putting the two data sets together, we see that Facebook is the clear-cut winner when it comes to online advertising of e-commerce goods, providing better sales conversions.
Unfortunately, a previous study on which we reported also points out that Facebook is a terrible customer support platform, so don't bother getting support or help via the retailer's Facebook page.
Retailers prefer Amazon to eBay
The survey also reveals that 60% of retailers prefer selling their goods through Amazon compared to only 13% that preferred eBay.
At the same time, 48% of all retailers expressed a concern with Amazon's increasing market share, which they expect to potentially cause problems in the near future.
Regarding their mobile userbase, 4 out of 10 resellers acknowledged that their mobile site version accounted for a fifth of their total traffic.
Regarding preferred payment systems, outside credit cards, which are the favorites on all stores, the survey shows that PayPal is the second most favorite payment method for 67% of respondents.
Second came Amazon Payments with 15%, followed by Google Wallet with 5%, Square and Apple Pay with 2%.
