In January, Actinic, Europe’s leading e-Commerce solution, revealed the results of its recent “e-Merchant profile” study[1]. Today, the company that caters to over 10,000 customers across Europe is proud to present the results of its study on social media and their impact on e-Merchant turnover. In 2017, 83% of all e-Merchants questioned use social media for business purposes.
Facebook’s positive impact on e-Merchant activity
2016 marked a turning point for e-Commerce, with the growth of sales via smartphones and the impact of social media on French e-Commerce. The Actinic/KPMG social media study carried out on a sample of 2,100 e-Merchants confirms that Facebook is widely used. 80% of all e-Merchants declare they use Facebook for business purposes, up 3% from 2015. The figures indicate that e-Merchants stand to lose out by ignoring Facebook: 30% of all businesses note a positive impact on traffic or turnover (that is to say that Facebook is responsible for at least 5% of their turnover).
Twitter, on the other hand, struggles to achieve effective positioning. Although 26% of all participants use it for business purposes, only 3% have noticed a positive impact on growth.
YouTube and Instagram, the growing importance of image
YouTube and Instagram’s remarkable results are worth highlighting. YouTube is used by 14% of e-Merchants, Instagram by 15%. The use of photos and videos is a growing trend; integrating appealing imagery is a simple yet effective way of increasing online sales. 9% of e-Merchants claim these social networking sites have had a positive impact on their turnover of at least 5%.
Google +, on the other hand, has performed below par: it lost almost half of its e-Merchant users since 2015 (13,5% in 2016, compared to 22% in 2015). www.actinic.co.uk
[1] Study carried out by Actinic between the 16th of November and the 23rd of December 2016, for the 10th consecutive year, involving over 2,100 e-Merchant participants across Europe.
