Polyvore is a community powered social commerce site, where users “Discover, Shop and Express [Their] Style.” They pride themselves in being influential, fashion forward, and style savvy. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest users, Polyvore members’ primary goal is to shop.
Polyvore is visually similar to Pinterest, with the same intent as Wanelo, but takes it a step further to enable users to create full outfits from head to toe, with direct links to buy onsite.
Polyvore thrives on the idea that inspiration drives shopping, generating 20% of all social shopping, more than Pinterest and Twitter combined. In large part this is because Pinterest and Polyvore users are on it for specific reasons and more often than not, they are ready to shop.
This is directly reflected in each site’s relative Average Order Value (AOV) for each driven social shopping session. Twitter’s AOV is around $60. Facebook’s is just over $90. Nothing compared to the average order value for a Pinterest shopping session which lands at almost $200. However, even that pales in comparison to Polyvore’s AOV, which is just under a whopping $400. That is more than Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter combined.
A large part of this is due to the fact that Polyvore not only attracts shoppers, but affluent ones, with over a third of visitors making over $100,000. This is where luxury has finally found its home among the social media giants which generally tailor to the masses. On Polyvore, 7 out of top 10 retailers pride themselves in being a high-end, luxury brand.
However, with Facebook’s extensive amount of users, it remains in the lead when it comes to sales, generating just above $10 million. What’s impressive, is that Polyvore with an incredibly smaller audience, is bringing in almost 60% as much, $6.34 million. Pinterest generated $2.1 million, while Twitter was responsible for only $93,000 in sales.
Polyvore’s user experience is very visual and engaging, the natural evolution of a traditional fashion magazine, made even more efficient with direct links to buy. As user-generated content becomes more prevalent in social marketing, retailers must take a look at Polyvore, where members are uploading over 20 million products a month. As members curate, create and share, brands are benefiting from product discovery, consumer insight and content distribution. And as members shop, brands benefit from transactions with shopping carts averaging $383.
[sources: richrelevance.com, polyvore.com]