Pinterest’s mobile site is referring more traffic to brands, and those visitors are spending more per order, says Piqora in a new study [download page]. The analysts looked at a sample of more than 400 brands – most heavily comprised of apparel (45%) and home decor (25%) brands – to arrive at its conclusions. Mobile visits from Pinterest’s site were up 73.2% year-over-year in January for the sample, while average order value grew by 79.3%. With the number of transactions also rising by a similar amount (77.2%), total revenue from Pinterest-referred mobile visitors increased by 224.1%.
Growth on the tablet side of things was more muted. While visits were up 43.7% year-over-year and average order value had grown by 30.5%, total revenue increases were limited to 10.3%.
While the study doesn’t contain any details concerning the actual extent of Pinterest-referred traffic to the brands studied, it’s probably quite small. Monetate’s latest e-commerce report, for example, showed that social platforms as a whole refer only a fractional amount of direct traffic to e-commerce sites. Nevertheless, Pinterest’s influence as a social traffic referrer is growing (as this chart illustrating its traffic share to publishers demonstrates) and brands are taking note. Indeed, a recent study from Experian Marketing Services found that 64% of brands tracked promoted Pinterest in their email campaigns last year, double the proportion from the year before.
One thing working in Pinterest’s favor: products pinned on the site have long shelf lives. According to a study last year by Piqora, half of product orders driven by Pinterest occur at least 2-and-a-half months after the product has first been pinned, signaling “strong latent demand for products” that are pinned on the platform.
Mobile referrals from Pinterest should likely grow – as research has indicated that the platform has a large proportion of mobile-only users.
