Top E-Tailers in June

The month of June saw Amazon.com regain
its position as king of the e-commerce jungle, once again ranking number
one as most popular shopping site, according to results released this week
by Internet market researchers PC
Data Inc.

Amazon bested No. 2 e-tailer eBay,
which unseated the online bookseller back in May, when it grabbed
the number one spot. In June, Amazon garnered a 14.7 percent reach, which
is the percent of online households that visited the site.

Other than Amazon and ebay slugging it out as top dog, there were few
changes to the top 20 list. PC Data said CDnow continues to enjoy a healthy growth
spurt, and upped its reach to 7.5 percent from
3.9 percent in April. Controversial digital download music site MP3 gained entry into the top 10 list, with a reach of 4.5 percent.

All top 20 shopping sites surpassed a 3 percent reach figure, which PC Data said is equivalent to
at least 1.3 million users in the month of June.

“May and June are not huge shopping months,” said PC Data president Ann
Stephens. “Although you have people shopping for Mother’s Day in May and
Father’s Day in June, it will be more interesting to see how the second
half of the year goes, with the big holiday season.”

In June eToys and
Buy.com rejoined the list, after a three-month absence. They bumped other popular sites such as Egghead and Freeride, whose reach dipped below 3
percent in
June.

“We really have to watch and wait to see what works with these e-commerce
sites,” said Stephens. “These figures show that the market is very young
and when sites get publicity, people will visit the site more often. It’s
going to take a while to sort itself out and we have to watch carefully
rather than draw conclusions,” Stephens said.

Reston, Va.-based PC Data estimates shopping traffic as the total number of
unique users who
went to at least one of the top 200 shopping-related sites in June. The
company said the list is formed using proprietary software tools which
track “unique” visitors, who go to a Web site and every visitor is counted
once, regardless of how many times they visit a site. The sample includes
55,000 home Internet users except AOL members. The total universe of
non-AOL home Net users is approximately 50 million, according to the PC Data.

Stephens said PC Data plans to track AOL users later this month and feels
that it will make an impact on the survey results.

“AOL users are a little different than mainstream Web users. They are more female and tend to do things differently,” Stephens said. “Any anomalies will be magnified when
we include them.”

In addition, Stephens said beginning next month PC Data will tabulate
not only site visitors or eyeballs, but shoppers who complete purchases
online as well.

TOP 20 SHOPPING WEB SITES
June 1999
Rank Website Unique Users
(000)
Reach(%) Avg. Time
Spent(hour:minute)
June May
1 2 amazon.com 6,463 14.7% 00:20
2 1 ebay.com 5,960 13.6% 03:14
3 3 download.com 4,499 10.2% 00:19
4 4 bluemountainarts.com 4,240
9.7%
00:17
5 5 cnet.com 3,312
7.5%
00:10
6 7 cdnow.com 3,288
7.5%
00:18
7 8 classifieds2000.com 2,417 5.5% 00:30
8 6 freeshop.com 2,316 5.3% 00:07
9 10 barnesandnoble.com 2,307 5.3% 00:10
10 12 mp3.com 1,969 4.5% 00:14
11 11 valupage.com 1,945 4.4% 00:09
12 9 coolsavings.com 1,896 4.3% 00:08
13 19 ubid.com 1,829 4.2% 00:17
14 15 beyond.com 1,749 4.0% 00:10
15 14 egreetings.com 1,488 3.4% 00:20
16 33 eToys.com 1,485 3.4% 00:10
17 22 buy.com 1,441 3.3% 00:21
18 13 spree.com 1,364
3.1%
00:24
19 27 columbiahouse.com 1,346 3.1% 00:29
20 17 launch.com 1,326 3.0% 00:11

Source: PC Data

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