Craggy Peak Research
Driving empathovation.

Social media links: How many, which ones, and where on the page?

Todd Haskell | February 24, 2020

This was a project we did for our own internal use, but it's more fun to share! Keep in mind that we focused on businesses similar to our own; the patterns we found may be different for B2C businesses, or businesses in different industries.

Research question

This project examined the social media presence of B2B companies providing market research, public relations, digital marketing, and web design services. The goal was to understand which platforms are linked to from the company's own site, and where those links are located on the page.

Sample

We examined the sites of 40 businesses in the categories mentioned above, focusing on smaller companies in our region (northwest Washington state), but also including some larger businesses and businesses in other regions. Many of the selected businesses we were already familiar with, others were identified through web searches. We were more interested in getting a range of different kinds of businesses than in getting a truly representative sample.

How many platforms?

  • On average businesses had links to 2.5 platforms.
  • Three of the businesses has no social media links on their sites; both were solo operations.
  • One business had links to 7 social media platforms.

Which platforms?

  • LinkedIn was the platform linked to most often (73% of sites).
  • If a site linked to only one social media platform, it was usually LinkedIn (5 out of 7 times). The exceptions linked to Twitter instead.
  • Interestingly, there were no sites that linked to just Facebook and LinkedIn; Facebook always appeared together with Instagram, Twitter, or both.
  • The most common single pattern was links to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (15% of sites).

Where are the links?

  • The most common location for social media links is at the bottom of the page on the right side.
  • In general, the bottom of the page is strongly preferred with 81% of links, versus 17% for the top of the page.
  • User expectations and search behavior are strongly influenced by conventions, so links at the top of the page may be missed, even if clearly visible.