New Data on Mobile Commerce Doesn't Look Bright for Social Media

Whether advertisers can monetize from mobile browsers on social media sites is arguably one of the most pressing issues in the digital marketing world today. It's inevitable that most web browsing will shift from the desktop to the smart phone. Data gathered from Branding Brand, a mobile commerce platform founded by graduates of my undergraduate alma mater, suggests that digital marketers should limit their expectations. They reveal that although social media has driven visits to retailers up by over 30%, mobile user conversions are trending downwards. While the findings are based on the experience of only five clients, the company points out that they are major retailers and the sample consists of over 250 million mobile page views.

What gives? Why aren't mobile customers buying? Perhaps the purchasing experience on smart phones is simply inferior to shopping on a computer. In any event, these findings have grave implications for the value proposition of social media for retailers. Facebook and Pinterest accounted for the lion's share of social-media driven mobile visits, sending 95.1% and 4.9% of visits, respectively, to the sampled retailers' websites (Twitter made up 0.02%). However, they achieved conversion rates of merely 0.22% and 0.07% in May... oh boy.