Ecommerce sales (gross merchandise volume) grew by 16.8%, best quarter in 2016 so far. After 2 years of slowing growth, Walmart ecommerce efforts are starting to show results. Ecommerce is still only 0.5% of total Walmart sales. However last year it was just 0.15%, so ecommerce will continue to become a bigger part of Walmart every quarter.
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Similar to fastest growing Amazon.com sellers, October on eBay was all about Halloween costumes. Many of the top sellers were able to take advantage of the Halloween rush. It is hard to pick out one seller to highlight. There are many niche stores, like mayfair99 selling stamps, and the many costume sellers.
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Today Etsy released Q3 2016 financial results and there is plenty to be excited about. Etsy reports that active sellers count grew by 11.3% from 1.5 million to 1.7 million. This shows the marketplace at a healthy state and growing. As we noticed when analyzing top Etsy sellers the key marketplace drivers are small and medium sellers. So as the marketplace adds more of those, it only gets better to the customers.
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October is all about Halloween. 7 out of the TOP 10 sellers are selling costumes. Compared to last October we are seeing a big shift in selling. Last year big sellers were able to participate in Halloween sales, however this year it is all about smaller sellers. The marketplace is shifting from massive retailers selling every brand possible, to small sellers focused on a few brands or manufacturers selling their own products.
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Just like we predicted when we looked at Amazon's Q2 results, by the end of the year marketplace sellers will finally be generating the majority of sales for Amazon. The marketplace share has been rising by 1% every quarter and in Q3 2016 it has reached 50%. This is a key turning point event because in 2017 marketplace sellers will be generating more sales than Amazon itself.
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Since including Etsy data in August we have been working hard on understanding how this marketplace functions and what insights we could uncover. Starting today we have enabled everyone to see how many products a seller has sold and how much feedback ratings they have received during the last month. More than 400,000 shops have sold at least one product in a month, while over 1.7 million have lifetime sales.
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Amazon recently sent out emails to marketplace sellers with the following message: We recently updated our policies to prohibit incentivize reviews, including those posted in exchange for a free or discounted copy of the product. You are receiving this email because products you sell have received incentivize reviews in the past. If you attempt to acquire incentivize reviews going forward, your Amazon privileges will be suspended or terminated.
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Recently Amazon changed their policy on sellers giving free or discounted products in exchange for reviews, banning this activity. Previously many sellers used various online services to get reviews. With Amazon no longer permitting this practice, reviews' providers are left having to figure out what to do next. We looked at their web traffic and found that it has started to drop drastically
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eBay reported Q3 2016 financial results this week. Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) grew to $18.9 billion, up from $18.6 billion last year, but only by 4%. In comparison eBay did $19.7 billion in sales in Q2 up by 5% from the year before. Overall, the results are not promising. Furthermore eBay active buyers growth is slowing down. In Q3 eBay had 165 million buyers, up by 3% from last year.
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Recently we saw multiple articles calling the Amazon's Buy Box algorithm unfair. We do not agree with this view. Amazon marketplace is built on delivering the best customer experience. Customer experience includes things beyond price - things like shipping price, likelihood of a seller being reliable, customer support quality etc.
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