European retailers lag behind on social media

European online retailers aren’t that popular or active on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, when compared to American e-retailers. But it seems that it helps to sell clothes online, as six of the ten most liked online retailers on Facebook in Europe sell primarily apparel.

But when we take another look at the top 10 most liked European online merchants on Facebook, we’ll see that only half are among the hundred largest online retailers of Europe, according to data from Top500Guide.com. And for Twitter the same trends are noticeable. On this social network selling apparel seems also very popular as seven of the top 10 online retailers on this site sell this kind of products. And six of the ten most followed European online retailers are not in the top 100 of the Top 500 Europe, a list Internet Retailer publishes every year.

More American retailers on Facebook
No, there’s nothing wrong with the number of Facebook likes for the above mentioned European online merchants. Alright, the average big European retailer has around 550,000 likes, half of the averages American top 500 retailer (that has around 1 million likes on Facebook), but still it’s really common for European retailers to interact with their consumers via Facebook or Twitter. They aren’t as active though, when you compare it with the presence of their American competitors. Because over there, 496 from the Top 500 players maintain a business page on Facebook, as in Europe ‘only’ 468 of the 500 largest online retailers have one. And on Twitter these numbers are even more out of balance, whereas 97.2% of all big American retailers are tweeting, compared to 87% of European merchants.

And almost nine in ten huge American online retailers host their videos on YouTube, compared to a little bit more than seven in ten European online giants. On Pinterest it’s even more unbalanced, where 78% of the American online retailers are putting pictures on their pinboards, compared to only 39.4% in Europe!