Australians still aren’t turned on by the new Amazon marketplace in Australia, it would appear from research released in The RetailX Australia Top250 Footprint Report that Aussies are still buying from what used to be their default site – Amazon.com.
As yet, RetailX research suggests, only 9% of the Australian web traffic that Amazon websites already enjoy goes to amazon.com.au, as measured before the site’s recent launch. Much more (70%) goes to amazon.com in the US, while Australian traffic to the retail giant’s other websites accounts for the remainder.
– Chloe Rigby, Editor, InternetRetailing
The report reveals that eBay is by far and away the biggest marketplace in Australia with a 26.1% market share with Amazon lagging behind on 7.2% based on website traffic based on data from Hitwise and SimilarWeb.
Of course it is still early days for Amazon in Australia which only launched on the 4th of December just in time for Christmas 2017. That’s a relatively short space of time to gain traction and of course to recruit third party merchants who typically supply 50% or more of the products sold on more developed Amazon sites around the world.
Here at Tamebay we don’t believe that Australians simply prefer to buy from America, it would appear much more likely that there simply aren’t enough products listed on Amazon in Australia for the site to be first preference when shopping, read on to find out why:
Lack of Prime and FBA in Australia
Amazon Prime
Amazon have yet to launch their killer attraction in Australia which is Amazon Prime offering unlimited free deliveries. Prime is a key differentiator – in the US the average Amazon customer currently spends around $1,000 annually but for Amazon Prime customers this shoots up to $1,300. If an American buys an Amazon Echo device then their annual spend sky-rockets to an average of $1,700. We would expect that as Amazon roll out more features for consumers that their spending will increase.
The good news is that Amazon Prime will launch in Australia soon. Amazon have a waiting list that Australians can sign up to if they want to be the first invited to subscribe.
Amazon FBA
Another missing feature is FBA enabling sellers to put their stock into Amazon’s own warehouses for Amazon to pick pack and fulfil. The benefit of this for buyers is that they can have confidence in estimated delivery dates as Amazon are second to none in getting products despatched on time. However Australians are so used to ordering from overseas that it may take some time for the lure of fast delivery and instant gratification becomes the norm.
There is a second downside to the missing FBA service and that is key for overseas sellers who wish to sell on Amazon Australia. For UK and EU sellers, shipping times to Australia can easily take two weeks from order to delivery whereas if products could be shipped in bulk to Amazon’s warehouse delivery to the end customer could be cut to just a day or so from the time at which the order is placed.
The Amazon Australia Opportunity
For sellers in the northern hemisphere and especially in the UK where there are no language barriers and a closely related culture, Amazon Australia offers an attractive first mover proposition. The site is still short of choice and selection. As a totally unscientic manner we picked three products as random examples and checked the number of available products listed on Amazon Australia compared to the UK and Australia.
If you’re looking to expand your overseas sales with no product translation needed then Amazon Australia looks set to be a top opportunity. Get in before your competitors do.
3 Responses
This would be fine if Amazon stopped gating catagories, allowing big businesses to thrive while completely erasing all small business competition from their platform. Maybe do a story on that…it might be something worth reading.