Amazon’s Prime Day initiative may be intended to drive traffic to its members-only deals –but new figures suggest the US retailer is not the only beneficiary of the event.
Analysis from SimilarWeb suggests that last year’s Prime Day was the sixth biggest online shopping day of the UK calendar – with other leading retailers cashing in as a result. It analysed visits to the top 25 UK retailers on that day, ahead of this year’s event, scheduled for July 12.
Together, it found, the day saw 29.1m mobile and desktop visits to the UK’s top 25 retailers, of which around 10.5m went to Amazon.co.uk. Chinese competitor Ali Express saw its best one-day UK performance on Prime Day 2015, with 670,000 UK visits.
That level of traffic put Prime Day ahead of Valentine’s Day in the UK market, which had 29m combined UK mobile and desktop visits, and Singles Day (27.6m), but behind Black Friday (52.9m), Boxing Day (52.3m), Thanksgiving Day (40.9), Christmas Day (40m) and Cyber Monday (37.7m). In the US, meanwhile, Prime Day was the fourth biggest online shopping day, after Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
Amazon itself has said that 30% of the deals on its website on Prime Day will come from small businesses that sell as third-party marketplace sellers on the site. It says the number of deals on offer on Prime Day will be 80% up on 2015, when Amazon Prime members bought more than 14m items worldwide from marketplace sellers.
“Prime Day is great for customers and sellers,” said Simon Johnson, director of seller services UK. “Customers have the opportunity to support small businesses by purchasing unique products at a great price with unlimited One-Day Delivery, and it helps sellers prepare for the upcoming Christmas period by providing a peak sales day as well as feedback and customer reviews on new and top selling products.”
