Shopify has reportedly beaten Amazon in a notable metric, online traffic, according to data reviewed by Business Insider.
The outlet reported that data it analyzed from market-research firm Similarweb shows that all the Shopify-powered sites surpassed Amazon for unique visitors in the last quarter of this year.
The metric is an interesting one for Shopify, which competes against Amazon for merchants on their platforms.
Shopify is said to have reached 1.16 billion average monthly unique visitors during the three months ending in June, compared to 1.10 billion for Amazon. Business Insider reported that the gap is expected to increase in the current quarter with Shopify-powered sites anticipated to draw 1.22 billion visitors versus 1.13 billion for Amazon.
The metric is an interesting one for Shopify, which competes against Amazon for merchants on their platforms. It comes as Shopify has seen continued growth throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
In its most recently reported quarter, Shopify announced its first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter driven primarily by soaring gross merchandise volume (GMV). The $1.12 billion in total revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was up 57 percent year-over-year. The quarter was also Shopify’s fifth-straight profitable quarter, with the company reporting a net profit of $879.1 million, a dramatic increase over the $36 million posted last year during the height of the pandemic.
When it comes to Amazon, the e-commerce behemoth still overshadows Shopify when it comes to most numbers. Amazon’s second-quarter 2021 results brought about its third $100 billion quarter in a row with more than $113 billion in revenue. However, the numbers fell short of analysts’ estimates for revenue and were a slowdown from the same quarter last year.
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Shopify has increasingly become a competitor to Amazon in recent years, prioritizing warehouse fulfillment, social media partnerships, and business banking as new areas of expansion. The Canadian company has also increased its focus on intellectual property. While Shopify with its small grouping of patents has a long way to go against Amazon’s thousands, New York University professor Scott Galloway has juxtaposed Shopify with Amazon. In 2019 he argued that Shopify has the ability to be a “true partner to e-commerce firms” as opposed to a “virus” that uses data to promote its own private label brands and effectively own the consumer relationship as Amazon does. Galloway said this has made Shopify a threat to Amazon that the trillion firm can no longer ignore.
And ignore Amazon has not. According to Business Insider and The Wall Street Journal, Amazon created an internal task force last year to “go after Shopify’s core small-business merchants.” The Project also reportedly includes a new type of point-of-sale system.
For its part, Shopify turned its focus to cross-border sales earlier this month, with an updated centralized hub for merchants to manage global commerce.
The company has also increasingly focused on investments to bolster its bottom line. Shopify’s strategy includes putting capital into companies that support Shopify’s merchant ecosystem, like Tapcart and Swyft, as well as companies that complement its e-commerce offerings. Investments also include Israeli ecommerce marketing startup Yotpo, Loop, Pipe, Bench, and Affirm.