For most parents, September marks the end of summer break and the start of a new school year. For retailers, back to school shopping means big bucks in revenue: an estimated $68 billion will be spent on back-to-school shopping this year, a growth of 42% over the last 10 years. Much of that spend is via e-commerce, as more than one-third of shoppers will make their retail purchases online.
With Americans spending more time on Facebook than on email and search engines combined, many retailers are investing more and more into their social media presence. Below, we take a look at how four e-commerce brands stack up. Using our FanGrader tool, we analyzed the Top 100 Facebook fans for Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair, and Zappos and their engagement with each brand’s last 100 Facebook posts during back-to-school season.
While Amazon has an impressive following of 25.9 million, our other contenders deserve honorable mention! As evidenced by Wayfair and Walmart’s percentage of PTAT to Likes (1.48% vs .13%, respectively), when it comes to buzz – quality trumps quantity. Wayfair’s small but mighty following of 2.2 million fans is exponentially more active than Walmart’s 32.6 million.
Similarly, Zappos, beats out both Wayfair and Walmart for highest overall fan engagement – it’s top fans’ comments earn nearly double the engagement of Wayfair and a third more than Walmart, second only to Amazon. Zappos also has the highest number of fan comments.
It’s also important to note that fan engagement is a two-way street. Reviewing each brand’s Facebook page feeds, both Zappos and Amazon actively reply to comments, encouraging that dialogue among its fans. By comparison, Wayfair actively prompts fans to comment to win sweepstakes and rewards incentives, engagement that may have lead to its high PTAT to Likes percentage but less overall earned engagement from those fans’ friends.
That said, Amazon’s Top 100 Fans take the lead in this edition of Battle of the Brands, with the highest score in Likes, PTAT, Fan Replies, Fan Likes, Fan Engagement, and Average Index. Impressive!
To learn more about your top fans, check out FanGrader here.
