July 23, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Yesterday, many publicly traded eCommerce stores announced their 2009 Q2 earnings. While the majority of e-tailers are not large enough to be a publicly traded company, it’s helpful to compare other eCommerce stores to the ones that set the bar. Amazon.com and Overstock.com are two such bar setters, having taken the online storefront from infancy to the popularity it holds today. Yesterday, we released a summary of Overstock.com’s Q2 earnings. Today, Amazon.com released their earnings which show exactly why and how Amazon remains at the top of the eCommerce industry.
Amazon.com has become a household name in the US. The Seattle based company entered the market through the sale of books online and quickly became a competitor to box stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble. Over the years, Amazon has expanded their offerings to electronics, credit cards, an online shopping cart, grocery delivery, and much more. They break these up into three groups: Media (books, movies, music & games, and digital downloads), Electronics & General Merchandise – EGM – (computers & office, home & garden, grocery, health & beauty, toys, kids & baby, apparel, shoes & jewelry, sports & outdoor, tools, auto, and electronics), and finally Other (Amazon enterprise solutions, web services, credit cards, & miscellaneous marketing). Overall, Amazon did not see a revenue loss in any of these three categories year over year. In fact, besides Media which remained flat year over year, Amazon saw a significant growth in a down economy. EGM rose 29% year over year in the US and 45% internationally. Another win was in the market of “Other” which rose 16% year over year in the US.
Amazon’s success comes from many contributing factors including ease of checkout, a thorough search and browse function, and a highly successful upsell and cross sell tool. Their “Customers who purchased A also purchased X” cross sell tool, set the bar for the industry. Ultimately, Amazon is an innovator when it comes to the online shopping experience, which explains its overall revenue of $4.6 Billion in Q2.
To view the full earnings report, click here.
Scott is an avid fan of all things ecommerce. His claim to fame is that he "puts the Zip in ZippyCart." He considers himself the world-wide number one reader of TechCrunch, C|Net, and The Ecommerce Times. Scott has worked in the SEO industry for many years, but found himself always shifting his focus to review sites and ecommerce blogs. When we decided to start the ZippyCart Ecommerce news, Scott was an obvious fit. He handles most of our OpEds as he is a very opinionated guy. Scott is also our Twitter guy, so don't hesitate to send him a tweet if you see him online.
