8 Top UK marketplaces ranked by traffic – July 2018

In February this year, we looked at the 8 Top UK marketplaces ranked by traffic. If you want sales then go where the consumers are would seem to make sense so today we revisit the stats to see how the marketplaces are performing in comparison with each other.

This isn’t intended to be a one stop guide as to which UK marketplaces you sell on. Traffic to some marketplaces (e.g. Tesco, Halfords and Game) is impossible to judge as they are also retailers in their own right. Others which may be of interest (e.g. Zalando and Alibaba have masses of traffic but perhaps not in the UK). Today we’re focusing purely on the marketplaces where UK traffic is clearly segregated.

Our primary source for the data is Alexa. This is not a definitive guide to the traffic reported by the marketplaces but has been used as it is a common source readily available for comparison. Data for the marketplaces ranked by traffic was sourced on the 22/7/18.

It is very apparent from tracking the data that marketplaces almost without exception see a significant dip in traffic over the summer months. We’ll be revisiting the data again after Christmas 2018 to see who the winners and losers are compared to the same period last year.

Amazon.co.uk

 
58.2% of Amazon.co.uk‘s traffic comes from within the UK with around 15% split between China (7.1%) , the US (6.8%), and Japan (4.8%). Only 2.8% of traffic comes from Ireland. Since February, China has overtaken Japan in terms of traffic.

Following what has to be expected as heavy traffic over the winter from the holiday season, Amazon’s traffic has dipped but is still considerably higher than the same time last year.

eBay.co.uk

 
70.8% of eBay.co.uk‘s traffic comes from within the UK with a further 8% split between the US (2.9%), China (2.1%), France (1.7%) and Ireland (1.3%).

Having seen steady declines in traffic for the 12 months to February, eBay UK traffic has had boost in the second quarter of 2018 which peaked in June. This has seen eBay’s UK traffic ranking rise from position 10 to position 8, putting the marketplace ahead of Twitter (in ninth place) and Reddit (tenth).

Gumtree.com

 
Gumtree attract a massive 82.6% of traffic from within the UK with a further 2.1% from the US, 1.1% from Franace with India 1.0% and Ireland 0.9% being the next biggest contributors to Gumtree’s traffic.

Last year we saw a massive rise in the use of Gumtree from April through to October, but in 2018 a similar pattern has failed to emerge, reflected in Gumtree dropping a couple of places in the Alexa rankings.

Etsy

 
The bulk (61.1%) of Etsy‘s traffic according to Alexa comes from the US with the UK being their second biggest market in terms of traffic at 5.6% of their total traffic. Canada (3.6%), France (2.8%) and Germany (2.7%) are also worth noting.

If we discount the massive upward blip in traffic over the Christmas period, Etsy have seen their traffic slowly rise over the past year. This will be an interesting one to watch as Etsy raise fees and start to spend more on advertising which is their stated intention.

Notonthehighstreet.com

 
67.9% of NotOnTheHighStreet‘s traffic comes from the UK, with a 8.3% coming from the US. India accounts for 3.3% of Notonthehighstreet’s traffic with Ireland and South Africa both accounting for 1.3%.

As we saw last year, NotOnTheHighStreet’s traffic has bombed during the summer months which is reflected in the UK and Global Alexa rankings. If you are a merchant on this marketplace then you should be considering it as a venue where Christmas is of paramount importance and ensuring that you use the summer months to prepare your stock and listings to take full advantage of the late November through to February key selling period.

OnBuy.com

 
OnBuy who bill themselves as a “British marketplace”, having jumped one place in Tamebay’s 8 Top UK marketplaces rankings, get 74.9% of their traffic from the UK with 7.3% attributed to the US.

Having seen the fledgling marketplace’s traffic rise steadily in their early growth period, it’s dipped very slightly in the past month so this is one to watch. We know that they have had considerable investment and have recently been announcing new multichannel management tool integrations and after the summer the Black Friday and Christmas period will be the true test of how their traffic grows.

Yumbles

 
Yumbles‘ traffic in the UK has shot up from 53.1% their total in February this year to 72.2% of their total this July. As a largely food marketplace, this may be reflective of unwillingness to ship perishable goods overseas during the extended period of hot weather the UK has recently experienced – in face Yumbles warned consumers that domestic UK deliveries may be delayed as suppliers are unable to cope with the heatwave and goods may simply get baked in the back of a courier van.

Yumbles has however shot up the UK Alexa rankings in traffic terms and having seen their low point in the year fall in August, traffic so far this summer is considerably higher year on year.

Flubit.com

 
Flubit attracts 59.2% of traffic from the UK according to Alexa with no other country being particularly noteworthy. In the last quarter Flubit’s traffic as totally bombed, but this shouldn’t be a huge surprise following their announcement that they are quitting their strategy of being a marketplace where you can buy at a lower price than on Amazon and have divested their marketplace to MonetaryUnit to become a blockchain cryptocurrency marketplace.