The impact of mobile social media on commerce

Though site visits are increasing, the number of conversions are falling.

Branding Brand is an m-commerce platform company that powers many of the top brands and therefore has access to a tremendous amount of mobile social media efficacy and commerce data, such as conversion rates.

It has discovered some interesting and surprising trends regarding marketing over this channel.

Among the companies powered by Branding Brand’s platform are American Eagle Outfitters, GNC, Ralph Lauren, Anthropologie, Sephora, Timberland, West Marine, TigerDirect, Crate & Barrel, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Steve Madden. The commerce data has revealed a great deal about m-commerce as a whole as well as the difference that social networks is making.

In the company’s latest report, it showed the results of data tracking from January 2012 through May 2012.

What it discovered was that conversions through mobile social media have fallen, even though there have been an increase to the number of visits to those sites and pages. Furthermore, it indicated that the overall impact of social media is quite limited within the smartphone and tablet channels. In fact, it was responsible for under 1 percent of the mobile website brand referrals.

Branding Brand was able to implement its analytics system in order to reveal new information and trends relating to m-commerce. It primarily examined the data from its five largest clients which, according to Christina Koshzow, the CMO of Branding Brand, saw an increase of 31 percent in their total visits over smartphones and tablets during January through May. However, while this would appear to be good news at a glance, as the amount of purchasing didn’t rise at the same time.

The data was gleaned from a total of 255,363,110 page views over smartphone and tablet devices. Overall, this meant 45,871, 654 visits in total over these devices. From them, these five top clients generated $18,641,773 during the months included in the analysis.

It is important to recognize that though they are the top five companies from Branding Brand, they remain only five, which is a very small group and which can hardly be considered to be representative of the entire mobile social media using retail community. Therefore, while this data should be considered important and is worth further investigation, it is still a reflection only of five of some of the leading interactive retailers, as opposed to an industry wide trend.