Heaviest users buy most online
Online retailers are taking to social media in a big way. They tend to be some of the biggest beneficiaries of social network users who friend or follow corporate pages. More than nine in 10 are planning a Facebook presence by the end of 2010. And some, such as Levi’s, have adopted Facebook’s new “like” button on individual item pages to help socialize shopping even further.
That could prove a good idea, as research from comScore shows that visitors to Facebook and Twitter spend more money on the Web than Internet users. On average, Web users purchased less than $50 worth of goods online in Q1 2010.
On Facebook, the visitors who spend the most time on the site also spend the most dollars on online shopping, with an average of $67 in spending for the top 20% of visitors.
Notably, Internet users who did not visit Facebook at all bought significantly less online than average, spending only $27 during the quarter. Not only are retailers on Facebook targeting above-average spenders, but the audience missing from the site is also worth much less in revenues.
On Twitter, higher spending did not correlate with increased usage, but site users did spend more than average, and more than most visitors to Facebook.
With older users driving much of the growth in social network usage in the past year, the sites are no longer home to teenagers and young adults with lower disposable incomes. Instead, users tend to be savvy and frequent users of the Web overall, making them more likely to be online buyers as well.
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Check out today’s other article, “Virtual Goods Boom in 2010.”