The UK is eBay‘s fastest growing market, the marketplace giant has said.
Devin Wenig, eBay’s president of global marketplaces, is reported as saying the number of Britons using the marketplace site had shown “double-digit growth, year-on-year,” that outpaces the average for ecommerce. That average is put at 15% globally by online etailers association the IMRG. The site, he told The Telegraph, now has 17m unique users each month and 40m listings. In the first week of February, it was the UK’s most visited retail site.
Growth of the use of mobile has been particularly fast, and now accounts for 10% of all its traffic. One item is bought every second from a mobile device, said the company. It is now working to add image recognition to its mobile app, allowing customers to take a picture of a product and search for it on the site.
Growth has been fast too in the number of retailers who trade through eBay. More than 180,000 businesses now do so, up from around 120,000 in 2009.
Seamus Whittingham, managing director EMEA at ChannelAdvisor said its own customers had seen a 22% increase in their UK sales through eBay.
“The UK has really started to embrace everything that eBay has to offer,” he said, “and businesses are exploring the opportunities online marketplaces present in terms of increasing sales, meeting the changing habits of shoppers and potential to open up foreign markets.
“Brands and retailers of all sizes are realising that, by including eBay as part of their online strategy, they are able to reach a huge number of potential shoppers in a way that can be extremely cost-effective if you put the right systems in place.
“With eBay always looking at new ways to engage brands and retailers with the consumer, I’m sure we’ll see eBay’s UK site continue to outpace the average ecommerce growth in other countries. It’s a very exciting time to be an online retailer.”
In an interview with The Telegraph,
