Hiconomics

This study by MarketTools about the use of Social Media by US adults, presents some quite interesting results. In summary:
- Over two-thirds (68%) of those surveyed said that they frequently use Social Media sites (mainly MySpace, YouTube and eBay). I’m not entirely sure how eBay made it into that category as with the kind of traffic it receives it will definitely end up skewing the data. Yes, eBay presents a platform for buyers and sellers to play the free-hand-of-the-economy game… and so constitutes as being ’social’… but from a web perspective I’d say it’s more of a retail site. People who go to eBay are generally researching products or services to buy. They’ll certainly come across some UGC content… but their main and primary purpose is shopping. Social Media sites for me are sites that users visit with the main purpose of socializing and keeping in touch with their friends, colleagues or fellow avatars. I suspect after removing eBay out of the research, the number will probably drop to 1/3.

- More interesting is the reported impact on the purchase decision. 47% is quite a high proportion of users changing their mind or being influenced by UGC. This does not surprise me very much, neither does the revelation that the female contingent are more likely to be influenced and change their mind, than the males. Interesting nevertheless.

Ultimately, this report emphasises that any transactional based website that sells product or services, should use UGC to optimise their content and help influence conversion. There is still a major gap though in identifying how to monetize pure Social Media sites like YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace…

An interesting question is, as UGC content starts to build up and get aggregated, distributed via APIs and spread all over the ether, will it’s impact on conversion reduce? Currently, UGC influences the product the end-user purchases AND the site they use to purchase it through. As more UGC is generated on the web, my feeling is that it’s influence will be limited to the product rather than the website… therefore, for all the websites out there thinking that a bit of UGC will help their conversions… it won’t be that simple.

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social media, UGC