Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Almost two-thirds of consumers (63%) have bought products online before collecting them in-store at least once in the past 12 months, while 16% use reserve-and-collect at least once a month.

Overall around a fifth (22%) of consumers said they have never used the service, which is actually a very slight increase compared to 2012 when the figure stood at 20%.

Even so, the data highlights the continuing importance of reserve-and-collect services for multichannel retailers as a sales tool. The Multichannel Retail Survey, conducted using the Toluna survey tool, also found that 50% of respondents had abandoned a purchase online due to unsatisfactory delivery options....

A Shopify study to reveal which social platforms drive the most traffic, convert to more sales and give you the highest sales value.

There are some very interesting discoveries here, perhaps the fact that Facebook dominates is not a surprise but, 85% of all social sales? That’s massive.

Let’s look at the key takeaways…

- Facebook drives 63% of all social media traffic to Shopify stores

-  Pinterest (13%) drives more traffic than Twitter (10.5%)

- Sales coming from Reddit grew 152% in 2013

- The highest average order coming from social traffic is $66.75, and it comes from Polyvore.

- Instagram is very close with $65Highest conversion rate is 1.85% from Facebook traffic....

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, E-commerce has grown 18.4% year over year in the second quarter of 2013. Online sales are booming with what seems like an endless growth opportunity in the near future. This is great news for companies such as Amazon who solely operate as an “E-tailer” but presents a challenge for local economies supplemented by mom and pop shops. Price matching is impossible, but there are 4 key methods of gaining an edge over e-tailers and beating them to your customer’s wallet...