Most retailers will be winding down for Christmas at the end of this week, last shipping day for 24 hour couriers will be Friday for delivery on Christmas Eve, so it’s time to take stock and see how your business performed and where improvements can be made in the New Year.
ChannelGrabber who provide eCommerce Management software, looked at order data from 800 accounts that were processed across online stores and different territories and have some interesting analysis to share.
Order Data from ChannelGrabber
| Channel | % Of Channel Accounts | % Volume Of Orders | % Value of orders | Average Transaction Value |
| Amazon | 35.8% | 46.6% | 45.0% | £15.52 |
| eBay | 39.6% | 48.7% | 42.7% | £14.09 |
| Play.com | 8.1% | 1.3% | 1.0% | £12.83 |
| Webstore | 16.5% | 3.4% | 11.3% | £53.44 |
Amazon
The data shows that both Amazon and eBay sales volume AND value per account held is outperforming the average. Amazon also generates an excellent average transaction values across their territories, so sellers should be ensuring they list on this channel to maximise revenue per product. Amazon US has showed the best growth within Amazons territorial split which ChannelGrabber tell us is up 100% year on year. If you’re not currently selling in the US then make this a priority for the New Year.
eBay
Ben Edwards, Marketing Manager at ChannelGrabber suggests that you should be maximising your eBay sales with multiple stores. He explained “Sellers should be looking to open tangent stores to maximise the above average volume and value results per account, as not only does it reduce long term risk (e.g. impact of negative reviews), but it also reduces competition impact. For example if a product has three competitors – of which a seller is one, opening a fourth would ensure market share is 2 of 4, not 1 from 3“.
Webstore
It would appear that the most profitable channel based on average transaction value is your own webstore. It appears that webstores are much more flexible for product bundling than on marketplaces which drives up the average order value. However order volumes are low and many sellers aren’t driving traffic to their webstores to maximise this channel.
Driving traffic will become even more important next year as Google Shopping moves over to paid Google Product Listing Ads, but with such remarkable average transaction values increasing your own website sales is essential.
Play.com
Ben tells us that Play.com is very interesting, although this is the channel with the lowest % of accounts it’s a growth channel. Sellers are starting to embrace Play.com as an additional channel to an eBay, Amazon or webstore business to drive incremental orders.
With a large percentage of Play account opened in the last 3 months, the sales volumes and values are perhaps stronger than the numbers give this channel credit for. With Play.com being acquired by Rakuten and starting to aggressively market the platform to UK retailers this is a channel to watch, and one to embrace in the New Year if you want to be ahead of the competition.
Summary
Marketplaces still drive the lions share of sales, both by order value and volume for ChannelGrabber clients. Whilst retailers need to learn how to drive traffic to their websites, it’s notable (and lamentable) that the marketplaces have still not yet implemented viable ways to increase overall order value.
On Amazon we’re simply limited to “people who bought this also bought this” messaging, and in general the cross merchandised products aren’t from the same retailer. On eBay Product Bundles appears to be permanently stuck in Beta, open to a select few sellers.
Marketplaces must start to provide ways for merchants to increase basket size and sell additional products. The one thing that stands out from all the figures for me is that, whilst marketplaces sell themselves on convenience, selection and especially on safety, consumers are willing to spend higher amounts on (in many cases relatively unknown) merchants own websites. Logic would say the reverse should be true, which indicates that marketplaces still don’t make it easy enough for consumers to spend more money.
If you’d like to learn more about ChannelGrabber and how they can help you grow your sales, you can contact them through their website.
9 Responses
“For example if a product has three competitors – of which a seller is one, opening a fourth would ensure market share is 2 of 4, not 1 from 3“.”
Possibly misreading this, isn’t that against eBay’s duplicate listing policy?
“More than one listing of an identical item listed separately by the same seller:
Under another eBay user ID
A good example a client discussed with ChannelGrabber was trousers. Sellers can create separate store brands for hiking trousers, work trousers, army trousers etc – but based on the same products.
The suggestion Chris made is also a creative solution!
If you don’t want to sell as multiple brands, you can still see the data suggests sellers should maximise cross-channel opportunities… selling the same products on eBay, Amazon, Play, own-brand webstores and others.
Cross-territory too – eBay and Amazon both have data showing this is increasing YoY.
Happy festive sales!
Thanks Chris for getting this post out. I very hope that SMEs understand the concept of Multi-Channel Sales.
Every channel has their own loyal customers and things sell on these channels just because because you are there. So, all you have to do is BE THERE.
Prabhat