{"id":791214,"date":"2024-09-16T14:41:28","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T12:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=791214"},"modified":"2024-09-16T14:51:03","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T12:51:03","slug":"takealot-smashes-amazon-south-africa-in-online-popularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business-opinion\/791214\/takealot-smashes-amazon-south-africa-in-online-popularity\/","title":{"rendered":"Takealot smashes Amazon South Africa in online popularity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Takealot is significantly more popular than Amazon South Africa, according to the latest data from Google Trends and Similarweb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon South Africa launched in May 2024 to much fanfare, with the promise of an online shopping experience which would provide “great value” on a “broad selection” of products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backed by its global powerhouse parent company Amazon, many shoppers expected Amazon South Africa to offer exceptional pricing on a huge range of items – as Amazon is well known for in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this was not the case – and its pricing was the same or more expensive<\/a><\/strong> than Takealot on many items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An analysis by MyBroadband also showed that it is often cheaper to buy and import technology products<\/a><\/strong> from Amazon US than it is to buy the same products from Amazon South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ecommerce experts in South African have raised concerns about the prospects of Amazon South Africa as a result, stating the US-backed company has a fight on its hands<\/a><\/strong> to win local market share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think Amazon has got a tough road ahead. They\u2019re not just going to come in here and take market share,” said Iser-Expert CEO Jonny Aarons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bidorbuy founder Andy Higgins echoed this sentiment, adding that Amazon has not always been successful in entering new markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon’s massive decline<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To see if Amazon South Africa is making inroads into Takealot’s leading position in the local market, we looked at the latest data available from Google Trends and Similarweb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Trends details the popularity of specific topics using real-time data from its Search, News, and YouTube platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarweb is a global data aggregation company specialising in web analytics and web traffic, detailing the performance of websites across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Trends and Similarweb are both good systems to use to measure an ecommerce company’s popularity – as ecommerce companies rely on online traffic to acquire new customers and make sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poor performance in online popularity rankings therefore shows that an ecommerce company is not hitting the right notes with the market in which it operates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Trends data shows that Takealot is far ahead of Amazon South Africa and its domain Amazon.co.za when it comes to popularity in Google Search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The graph below shows the performance of Takealot and Amazon South Africa in Google Trends between 16 June to 16 September 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What will be concerning for Amazon South Africa is that when the Google Trends data range is extended back to May – when the company launched – we see its popularity has declined sharply following a burst of initial interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The graph below shows the performance of Takealot and Amazon South Africa in Google Trends between 1 May to 16 September 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is clear that when Amazon South Africa launched on 6 May, there was a lot of interest online about the ecommerce platform – likely generated by the extensive news coverage the launch received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon South Africa has failed to maintain that interest, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its popularity in Google Trends declined rapidly in the days which followed, and continued to fall throughout June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From July onwards, it has stabilised at a fraction of Takelot’s popularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More visitors, more time<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Website traffic data from Similarweb tells a similar story, with Takealot receiving substantially more visitors to its website than Amazon South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The graph below shows the number of monthly unique visitors Takealot’s and Amazon South Africa’s websites receive – based on data from Similarweb – over June, July, and August 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be noted that Similarweb data is based on a combination of measurements channels, including first-party analytics, contributory networks, digital signal partnerships, and public data extraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Takealot is also dominant when it comes to shoppers spending time on its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data from Similarweb shows that people spend well over 5 minutes on average on Takealot’s website each time they visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By comparison, people spend under 1 minute 30 seconds on Amazon South Africa’s website each time they visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The graph below shows the average visit duration per user on Takealot’s and Amazon South Africa’s websites over June, July, and August 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Google Trends and Similarweb data paints a clear picture of Amazon South Africa not catching up to Takealot in the past three months when it comes to popularity online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This aligns with feedback from industry experts who have stated that it will not be a walk in the park to dethrone Takealot as the leading ecommerce player in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think Amazon has got a tough road ahead. They\u2019re not just going to come in here and take market share.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":779612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[657,19929,3314],"class_list":["post-791214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-south-africa","tag-takealot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791214"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791301,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791214\/revisions\/791301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}