INTRO
Web analytics is crucial to operating in our digital landscape.
It becomes even more important if you are an ecommerce retailer. This week, we’ve been tasked with examining how web analytics and seo are used to fuel the actions of ecommerce retailers that we're interested in. Ideally, using a case study scenario. For me, this means determining who are the shinning stars of the ecommerce retailer industry and deciding which one is best to explore.
To properly assess the dynamics in play that distinguishes top brands from the pack in their respective industries, let's consider:
- What determines a top performing company (Brand)?
- What special resources do the top companies have over their competitors?
- And how does web analytics help with top performance?
Short answer?
Excelling at search engine optimisation (seo) to successfully increase your online presence. Quick Google searches using different variation keywords of top rated ecommerce retailers all seemed to point me in the same direction. Amazon! One such example is Similarweb where Amazon appears in the top 5 spots with Amazon.com ranked first.
Given that I am a very satisfied Amazon customer, I decided what better company to use.
But what makes Amazon stand out?
THE AMAZON BRAND
Before we dig deeper into this, let’s take a brief look at Amazon’s history. “Amazon was begun in 1994 in Seattle Washington by Jeff Bezos, and was initially little more than an online bookstore.” (Ecommerce Platforms, n.d.)
In addition, “Not only is Amazon the most valuable internet retailer in the world, it is the most valuable retailer period, having surpassed Wal-Mart back in 2015. It is also the fourth most valuable company in the world, topped only by Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft. (ibid)
Think what it means that you can boast that your company is in the same high performing category as Apple and Microsoft. Isn’t this type of kudos impressive?
TRAFFIC ANALYSIS BREAKDOWN
To further appreciate Amazon’s dominance here’s a look at its website traffic analysis from popular software tool SEMrush:
What do we see? In May 2022, Amazon enjoyed 3.3 billion page visits. Of this, nearly 840 million were unique visitors. Further, page visit duration averaged 16 minutes. With a bounce rate of less than 50%. While the optimal percentage would be between the 20 to 40% range. (Lahey, 2020) A bounce rate of 49.68% is moderate and still considered acceptable.
Now look at this image below which shows a breakdown of Amazon’s website traffic even more.
In this we see that of the 3.3B visits, slightly over 81% (2.7B) were directly to amazon.com. In other words, people knew that Amazon was where they wanted to go and typed in its URL.
The second most popular way persons accessed the site was through conducted searches at 12.13% or 397.8 million people.
Plus, the data also shows that 70% of Amazon’s web site traffic is via a mobile device. This trend is noteworthy, given that mobile devices are continually being used to access the Internet in significantly high numbers since 2019. (Galov, 2022)
What’s more, in May 2022, the data revealed that the 25-34 age group was the dominant visitor to Amazon’s site; as seen here.
Also of note, is that of the 839.6M unique visitors to the site, just over 65% (547.7M) were male.
This is the type of web analytics that a company like Amazon values and tends to investigate. For instance, analysis could be done on the higher male visitor count in May 2022, looking at:
- Was it only unique to this month?
- Or do males usually visit amazon.com in greater numbers than females?
- Even more, when they visit the site, where are they spending their time?
- And do these visits result in conversions (purchases)?
- If they do, what is being purchased?
- When purchases are made, how much is spent?
In reviewing the image, did you notice that the highest number of visitors were in the US (81.17%, 2.7B)?
Did you also notice that the second highest though only at 2.36% totaled 77.2M who were in India?
Amazon's thought process would be: What are persons in India purchasing? How much are they spending? And how can we assist in their future purchasing needs?
Another notable observation of the traffic distribution is that with all five countries, mobile was the device of choice for accessing the site. Amazon's possibilities are endless in terms of using a tool like SEMrush to analyse their online presence and determine where improvements are necessary.
AMAZON AND BIG DATA
This wouldn’t get to the core of what the Amazon brand is all about though. A well-established brand like Amazon uses Big Data Analytics. With billions of people visiting Amazon regularly, regular relational database analysis would not be able to handle this volume.
Especially when considering that big data analytics is a primary tool driving Amazon’s recommender engine. In fact, Amazon has it own seo algorithm. Amazon SEO is the practice of optimizing your product listings for Amazon’s ranking algorithm, A9. These optimizations include using keywords (or search terms) in a product listing’s title, uploading high-quality photos, setting competitive prices, and more. (Berry, 2021)
AMAZON SEO
They say a picture is worth a thousand words so rather than explaining how the algorithm works I share from my own account what happens when I conduct a product search.
Notice anything? By simply typing in iPhone look at the recommended options provided? Doesn't this resemble a Google search? Now let's see what happens when I make a selection.
I decided to select iphone pro max case
You will notice that I can select the brand I want and then price range I'm looking for. Once this is done I will get more options to choose the material, my preferred seller, whether I want a new or used case and the case color. Once I've made my selection and I choose the one I want to buy, this is the screen I'll see:
So now I can decide if I want to buy now or add to my cart. Once I'm here whenever making a purchase I usually see a people also search for or buy with, like this:
So what we see is an example of both the Amazon seo and recommender algorithm as work. I was able to get options to assist me with my search and before making the final purchase I was provided with options to complement my choice based on purchases of other users. This is a prime example of how Amazon uses web analytics and seo to maintain its position as the highest ranked ecommerce retailer worldwide.
Until next time, I'll leave with this brief video on the fundamentals of Amazon's big data recommendation system.
References:
Berry, S. (2021, March 11). What Is Amazon SEO? (And How to Rank Higher on Amazon With SEO). Retrieved from https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/what-is-amazon-seo/
Ecommerce Platforms. (n.d.). What is Amazon? Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/467s9ebd
Galov, N. (2022, April 6). What Percentage of Internet Traffic Is Mobile in 2022? Retrieved from https://webtribunal.net/blog/mobile-percentage-of-traffic/#gref
Lahey, C. (2020, December 15). What Is Bounce Rate and What Is a Good Rate? Retrieved from https://www.semrush.com/blog/bounce-rate/
Similarweb.com (n.d.). Top Websites Ranking. Retrieved from
Nicola, thanks for taking me through your Amazon purchasing experience and revealing the site's traffic. I must admit the 3.3 billion figure for May 2022 visits and the 839.6 million unique visitors are staggeringly high figures, but for the world's largest retailer they make sense.
ReplyDeleteWhen you concluded how Amazon's SEO and algorithm paired to give you a personalized shopping experience from initial search through completed purchase, several pieces clicked into place.
I have purchased a few required textbooks and always see related marketing resources in the people also bought section. Usually, I ignore it because I'm on a budget and focused on school supplies. I have also taken note of the different sellers, particularly for new and used items.
You did a great job of breaking down the process with solid analytical data and visuals from your shopping process. Thanks, Nicola!
Thanks much for your feedback Jessica.
ReplyDeleteLike you I hadn't really paid much attention to the people also asked/purchased sections, only focusing on what I needed.
But now I have an even greater appreciation for the recommender system's value.