Retailers can benchmark performance, and track and evaluate online sales trends and market share, with a new e-Commerce monitoring tool from eDataSource. The service monitors 9,000 brands and social media, e-Commerce and email activity, including more than 800,000 consumer inboxes. It scrutinizes purchase confirmations to reveal valuable competitive intelligence, such as comparative growth and average order size.
As part of the launch, eDataSource conducted detailed analyses of the sales and subscription rates at Walmart.com, Amazon.com, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Gilt, Ideeli,Netflix, OfficeDepot, Staples and others. It used data from more than 580,000 online purchase and subscription confirmations over the last six months. The analyses revealed considerably different product mixes and purchasing patterns between Amazon.com and Walmart.com, as well as between Amazon.com and iTunes.
Data showed that Walmart.com’s average order value is nearly triple Amazon.com’s, even though Amazon’s total sales are more than five times greater. That’s because Walmart’s online customers make bigger purchases, such as HDTV’s and car tires, and have them shipped direct to store.
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Walmart.com’s average order value, excluding digital purchases, is $124 while Amazon.com’s is $49, according to an eDataSource press release. For Walmart.com, the average order includes 2.3 items, compared to 1.5 items on Amazon.com. For competitors Gilt and Ideeli, the respective average order values are $123 and $98, and for Staples and OfficeDepot, the respective average order values are $143 and $107.
Digital goods purchase confirmations also were analyzed, showing a substantially higher growth rate at Amazon than at iTunes. Amazon’s sales of digital goods saw a 21% increase from December 2011 to January 2012. This compared to 8.5% growth at iTunes and the Apple App Store over the same period. An examination of the overlap in customers, however, showed that the percentage of Amazon digital customers who also buy at iTunes has remained constant at 19% since the beginning of November, the press release stated.
eDataSource is tracking similar data for more than 100 leading companies in online retail, daily deal sites, apparel and travel.
