Holiday eCommerce Traffic Sources, January 2013 [CHART]

Chart - Holiday eCommerce Traffic Sources

Only 2% of traffic to retailers during the holiday season came from social networks, per figures released by Adobe Systems. Analyzing billions of visits to nearly 500 retail websites during the holiday season, the study shows that direct traffic accounted for a plurality 40% of site visits, while roughly one-third of visits were search-driven. On a year-over-year basis, the share represented by direct and social traffic increased, while search’s share dropped slightly.

Adobe isn’t the first to detail social media’s rather small influence over the holiday season. According to a report from Baynote, Pinterest and Twitter influenced online and in-store purchases for just 1 in 10 shoppers surveyed, with Facebook garnering only slightly more interest. Meanwhile, IBM found that on Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day ever, social media sites referred just 0.8% of e-commerce site traffic and accounted for only 0.4% of sales. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.