What exactly is happening in the battle of Amazon and eCommerce vs traditional retail stores? Who is really winning? There’s plenty of talk and every business owner has stories to tell. But, just like truly understanding your Amazon sales and customers requires you to have the best Amazon seller tools and statistics, you need the facts and figures on this issue. eCommerceFuel put out its ‘State of the Merchant Report’ and it reveals a lot about the Amazon vs e-commerce vs retail sales tussle in today’s marketplace.
The author of the report, Andrew Youderian, sent out surveys to store owners and received over 300 responses from companies with 6-figure revenues that aren’t yet large enough to grab the attention of many analysts.
Let’s mine some data and make it easy to digest – in case the infographic isn’t your style.
Growth of Business Lines
eCommerce is starting to crush physical retail stores in the US. Stores selling products made/offered by other companies are feeling the pinch especially. That means even K-Mart is having some financial difficulties thanks to competition from eCommerce which is, of course, dominated by Amazon.
US companies that sell their own products/labels are doing better, especially in niche lines of retail. Private labels and manufacturing are still growing but not as fast as they once might. Meanwhile, conditions are a bit different in Canada or Europe where ‘brick and mortar’ retail is growing 50% faster than in the US.
What does this mean? If you sell labels and brands made by others, you need to be selling on Amazon and being competitive. Now. And to do that, you need the best software for grabbing and sorting data from your Amazon sales.
By the Numbers: Best and Worst Businesses
As of the beginning of 2017, the sales areas that have seen the most growth are health/personal care (30.9%), automotive (29.6%), and pet supplies (29%).
The lower end of the growth scale really isn’t too far behind in growth: arts & crafts (21.4%), electronics (21.3%), and tools/home improvement (19.5%).
About 50% of all these businesses are also using Amazon in some way for their sales.
As specific needs fluctuate, often the type of business accounts for much of the growth or decline. Dropshipping (45%) and reselling (31%) industries have taken the biggest dives while manufacturing (31%) and private label (32%) have increased.
eCommerce, Attraction and Conversion
Conversions (actually making sales) are the bottom line for a business. With so much competition out there, we all have to fight for each customer.
What methods of marketing and doing business are most successfully attracting customers? Well…
- Organic online searches (47.8%). You’d better have great SEO and engage in eCommerce!
- Paid advertising (29.3%)
- Non-paid social media (8.6%)
- Direct marketing (7%)
- Email campaigns (2.5%)
- Miscellaneous (4.8%)
Overall average conversion rate is 2.1%. Businesses with higher conversion rates are, not surprisingly, selling their own unique brands, especially in health/personal care, automotive, and pet supplies, etc.
The Amazon Trend
Many of the businesses in eCommerceFuel’s survey reported that Amazon sales made up only 6.2% of their overall revenue. But look closer. For 20% of the businesses that do sell on Amazon, their primary revenue is 76% thanks to the eCommerce giant. That is set to grow exponentially.
Amazon is most definitely the way business is going. That means you need to be competitive in your businesses Amazon sales against other eCommerce competitors and retail outlets.
How can you be competitive? Offer products and services that are unique and…
…use an outstanding Amazon seller tool that provides comprehensive data and graphs for your sales, profits, conversion rates, demographics, campaign results and SEO.
That’s how you can stay competitive in the exploding Amazon and eCommerce world.
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