Do you remember how shopping was like before online marketplaces were all the rage? Reminisce how you painfully used to visit a store to buy the fashion stuff, but, now these sales hulks have made it approachable to get an item shipped right to your entranceway! You can save plenteous of time, don’t have to meet a lot of strangers to bargain one item, and go through the fuss of leaving home anymore.
The theory of online marketplaces brings sellers and buyers composed in a single place that saves them time & money. If you as a shopper has to pick between walking into a brick-and-mortar store or routing online to buy something, what will you decide on? Let us predict, apparently chances are that you will pick online marketplaces.
The best online marketplaces can add additional source of revenue, cut marketing costs, internationalize your businesses, gives you a way to compare prices, 24/7 support, and an advanced level of trust between brand and customers.
Currently, China retains the world’s biggest e-commerce market with $672 annual online sales, 15.9% e-commerce share of retail sales. The US is allegedly the world’s second most established market for online spending as many of the supreme e-commerce companies reside there. Total annual online sales were calculated to be $340 billion in worth with a 7.5% e-commerce share of total retail sales.
If we assess, just about three years ago in the US, e-commerce was accountable for $2.3 trillion in sales, but this stat is projected to rise to $4.5 trillion by 2021, hopefully. As per the Statista January report, the list of online marketplaces in the United States are given below:
During the report, it was revealed that eBay was the top-most loved marketplace with a total score of 6.53 on a scale of 1-10. The outcomes were calculated in four basic areas – ease of use, customer service, communication, and profitability. Surprisingly, Amazon ranked seventh whereas Bonanza ended up second in the competition.
Let’s take a look at who are these rising stars.
eBay
Just like other online marketplaces, eBay offers to buy and selling of products but it a unique way. Sellers list their items for sale and users bid on them in auctions.
It’s simple; you go to the main page, type a search for example ‘sports shoe’, all the items that match this search will be shown in front of you in the list form.
You will see two listing options: ‘auction’ or ‘buy it now’. Once you click on the auction button, there will display a selected list of items you can bid on to avail of a good deal. The bidding time will show up on the top, for instance ‘time left: 1 day 14 hours’, you place a bid and try to win the auction.
If you become the highest bidder, you win the auction.
- There are 182 million eBay users all-inclusive as per Jan 27, 2020 statistics
- Currently, the app is used by 34.9% of all US mobile users
- The top-selling product category on eBay is ‘electronics & accessories’ as a total of 16.4% of items are being bought
- There are 1.3 billion listings on eBay
- 71% of eBay purchases are shipped for free
- 28% of eBay sellers reside in the US
Bonanza
They say ‘you are losing money if you’re not selling it on Bonanza.”
Bonanza earned the second position as one of the fastest emergent online marketplaces. It is offering help to the sellers over forums, community, and chat features which lets the seller mature a strong relationship with the consumers.
If you look at the stats, 4.02M people stopover the site, 77.95% of the traffic comes from the USA, 2.2% Of traffic is from Referrals, 54.78% of traffic is from search; 35.35% organic & 64.65% paid to be exact. 1.94% Of traffic is from Social especially YouTube i.e. 40.44%.
Ruby Lane
Ruby Lane, specifically, has an inventory of antiques, vintage fashion items, vintage collectibles, dolls, art, jewelry for retail sales. It’s home to more than 2k active shop owners, and over 1 million visitors stop at the site to buy products above 15 million in variety.
The resource says that Ruby Lane comes as 3rd in the 2020 seller’s choice awards from the category of best online marketplaces.
Stats say:
- 1.39M visitors’ stopover the site
- 83.74% of the site traffic comes from the USA
- 1.82% Of traffic is from Referrals
- 61.11% Of traffic is from Search; 94.15% Organic and 5.85% Paid
- 5.37% Of traffic is from Social, especially Pinterest i.e. 61.26%
Mercari
It is a selling app; an online marketplace to sell/buy toys, sporting goods, or electronics. With 50+ downloads in the US alone and 350k new listing made available each day, they are just getting started.
- $100 million monthly transactions
- 5 million users
- 100 million downloads globally
- 100 full-time staff in the U.S alone
- 30% of the population using it
- ·$2 billion estimated valuation
Etsy
Etsy focuses on handmade or vintage objects that must be no less than 20 years old. A wide range of categories includes jewelry, clothing, bags, furniture and home décor items, also toys, art, and craft supplies.
- 2.1 million active users
- 44.20 million seller buyers
- Etsy seller is about US$ 56,180 and 34% of buyers are non-US clients
Poshmark
Poshmark is currently selling in the USA and Canada only as a leading marketplace to buy and sell fashion. It offers fast shipping; orders are delivered within 1-3 business days.
- 60 million users
- Shop over 9,000 brands in every size
- 8 million sellers
- 75 million listings
- 5,000 brands
- A sale is made on Poshmark every 1 second
- 36% of users reside in the Southern part of the USA
Amazon
Amazon is one of the largest online marketplaces has put together customer service, inventory, and shipping empire that offers all from clothes to lawn, furniture to janitorial supplies, etc.
- The most popular app in the US with 150.6 million mobile users
- 89% of customers prefer to buy from amazon
- 150 million amazon prime subscribers
- $75.5 billion in sales revenue earned in 2020
- 82% of buyers say the price is the main factor on the platform
- 4000 products sold in the US daily
Craigslist
It is a low-key site if you look at it, at times a bit confusing but it keeps providing steady and stable services to its customers. Craigslist is an American advertisement website having a section devoted to housing, jobs, items for sale, services, community service, gigs, discussion forums, and resumes.
- 60 million users Tweet their stats
- 50 billion page views per month
- Supports 13 languages
- Posts 80 million ads per month
- more than 1 million job listings
- 200 million postings
- 100 forums
- 40 Craigslist employees
- More than 700 sites
- Operates in 70 countries
Facebook must be already a part of our daily routine; you don’t even notice but whenever you pick up your phones or open up your laptops, you go straight to see what’s happening on your profiles. Irrefutably, the social site has connected more people than any site has ever done in the past.
- with over 2.7 billion monthly active users
- 60.6% reaching of internet uses
- brought in $17.44 billion in ad revenue
- more than 80 million small businesses
- seven out of ten (69%) adults in the U.S. claim that they use Facebook
- 65% of adults prefer to use it
- users spend an average of 58.5 minutes’ daily
- 86 percent of marketers use Facebook for advertising in the US
- 78 percent of American consumers have discovered retail products here
eCrater
eCrater comes on 10th in the 2020 Sellers Choice Awards for online marketplaces. Here’s a review:
“For someone new eCrater can be a bit confusing but customer service is TERRIFIC and very helpful and they get stuff sold for a person and their rates are the lowest. Once you get it all figured out it’s very easy and profitable.”
- 1.59% Of traffic is from referrals
- 59.79% Of traffic is from search i.e. 39.86% organic, 60.14% paid
- 4.75% Of traffic is from social, especially from Pinterest i.e. around 53.47%
FYI
Why not start your online marketplace? With NextBridge, you can instantly get an online marketplace developed that is highly-scalable, and highly-affordable. You can introduce industry-leading product features to run a full-fledged marketplace, globally.
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