With Facebook ranked as the #1 website in the US, retailers have been increasingly turning to social media to communicate with current and potential customers, particularly during the critical holiday shopping season. As a traffic driver, the Social Networking and Forums category ranked 3rd overall behind Search Engines and cross-shopping across other retailers in the Department Stores category. Social Networking experienced the highest change among the upstream industries driving traffic to the Retail 500 in December and the share of upstream traffic (visit immediately before) increased 27% when compared year-over-year.


Google was the top referral source to the Retail 500 in December with 19% of all upstream traffic, followed by Facebook and Yahoo! Search. When compared to last December, the share of upstream traffic from both Facebook and YouTube increased 68%. One caveat is that some of the traffic is going to be natural movement between the websites with visitors going from Facebook and YouTube to the retailers simply from checking Facebook and YouTube often – although this can also be a key indicator that your audience is visiting both websites.


Not surprisingly, the top retailers within the Retail 500 to receive downstream traffic from the Social Networking & Forums category are Amazon and Wal-Mart, but both retailers also received a higher share of downstream traffic (visit immediately after) when compared to December of last year. Zappos, Target and GameStop followed with the highest change in share year-over-year.

Visits do not always equal sales, but the increasing share of traffic moving in between social networks offers retailers another marketing channel to interact with potential buyers.
Please join us on Wednesday, January 13, 2011 for additional insights about the holiday season during the Experian Hitwise 2010 Holiday Retail Recap webinar.