Amazon continues to dominate UK ecommerce, with research from Hitwise showing that visits to Amazon were up 3% this year, against a backdrop of a 3% traffic fall across the whole of UK ecommerce on Black Friday.
With some 49.98 million visits on the day, Amazon represented a quarter of all ecommerce visits over Black Friday – and it processed some 4.22million transaction on Black Friday alone, 9% more than last year.
Amazon’s dominance in the UK comes on the back of more shoppers than ever using it as the search engine for shopping, with 24% of retail searches around Black Friday starting in Amazon.
However, Amazon is also proving to be really hot at conversions too: of these searches, 8.44% were converted on Black Friday,
double the average of the next 20 top retailers. Some 19% of all visitors to the site bought from it. This, says Hitwise, illustrates the importance of Amazon’s vast range – selling items both directly and from its sellers – and the wide number of offers available.
“Online retail has slowed down, but Amazon is still finding ways to grow. Hitwise data shows that the ecommerce giant has now become its own search engine. It is getting more effective at keeping people on the site and converting them at double the industry average. Amazon is taking more share of the consumer’s online journey and we are seeing brands react to this. More spend and efforts are now being dedicated to Amazon, optimising how a brand’s products are getting featured by the ecommerce giant.”
– Lisa Luu, global head of insights at Hitwise
