Retailers Struggle to Catch Up to Amazon and eBay on Site ‘Stickiness’

Amazon’s reach and engagement levels are far ahead of anyone else's.
By Rebecca Borison ,

Traditional retailers continue to battle against the e-commerce natives, Amazon (AMZN) - Get Report and eBay (EBAY) - Get Report , but a new report suggests they're miles behind when it comes to web site "stickiness."

Stickiness, according to digital analytics firm Verto, is measured by dividing a site's number of daily users by its number of monthly users. In Verto's third quarter analysis of e-commerce stickiness, Amazon and eBay both came out on top among the 30 U.S. retailers with the largest online presence.

Amazon has 193.8 million monthly users, who spend an average of 101 minutes on the site per month, an average of 18 sessions per month, and an average session length of 5 minutes and 36 seconds. The e-commerce giant has a stickiness level of 26.6%, meaning that more than a quarter of its users visit Amazon every day.

eBay is doing pretty well, too, with 109.9 million monthly users, who spend an average of 93 minutes on the site per month, an average of 16 sessions per month, and an average session length of 5 minutes and 50 seconds. eBay has a stickiness level of 17.9%.

While Walmart (WMT) - Get Report is up there with Amazon and eBay in terms of monthly users (124.1 million), its stickiness level is just 13%. And that's one of the highest for traditional retailers, whose websites' stickiness levels range between 5% to 13%. To name a few, Target's (TGT) - Get Report stickiness level is only 6.8%, Best Buy's (BBY) - Get Report is 8.6%, Home Depot (HD) - Get Report is 6.8%, Sears (SHLD) is 5.8%, Staples (SPLS) is 7.8%, and Macy's (M) - Get Report is 5.6%. These numbers show that Amazon and eBay customers visit those sites much more frequently than do customers of traditional retailers' websites.

"For many traditional retailers, there is a lot of money spent on audience acquisition and spontaneous downloads," said Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo. "Trials are perhaps boosting their user numbers, but this has yet to convert into long-term retention and engagement with these platforms among their desktop or mobile users."

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