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Study: Facebook Tops Social Commerce

Facebook is the social media platform that drives the most online sales. That’s according to a new study from Shopify, which found that Facebook funneled almost two-thirds of all social media visits to Shopify-run web stores and resulted in about 85% of all orders from social forums.

Facebook was especially dominant in certain shopping categories, said Shopify, an e-commerce platform that enables businesses to create e-commerce stores. About 98% of photography-related social commerce came through Facebook, followed by sports/recreation (94%), pet supplies (94%), drop shipping (93%), jewelry/watches (92%) and clothing/apparel (87%).

Despite Facebook’s pole position in the sales driver race, other social platforms powered commerce too. For instance, Pinterest generated 74% of orders in the antiques/collectibles category, while YouTube facilitated 47% of sales of digital products. Twitter, meanwhile, helped spark 18% of catalog and home/furnishing orders. “While Facebook was the clear leader, marketers may fare well when using secondary platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter in conjunction with their Facebook page,” according to eMarketer.

That point was further emphasized by Shopify’s finding that, while Facebook accounted for the highest volume of sales, it finished in fourth place when assessed on average order value. Polyvore took the top spot with a $66.75 average tally, while Instagram was second at $65. Pinterest came next ($58.95), followed by Facebook ($55). Twitter’s average order value was $20 behind Polyvore’s pace at $46.29, while YouTube’s $37.63 put it in last place behind others that included Reddit ($52.96), Vimeo ($50.75), LinkedIn ($44.24) and Google+ ($40).

The Shopify study analyzed data from 37 million social media visits that led to 529,000 orders.