We analyzed 370 ecommerce sites in Asia. Here’s what we found

How fast is Asia’s ecommerce market growing? Which verticals have been growing the fastest? How do different verticals shape up in terms of engagement?

In this article, we at Metisa compare the growth, engagement, and sources of traffic across five ecommerce verticals:

• Fashion
• Home & Electronics
• Beauty
• Luxury
• Food & Groceries

This analysis is based on our market reports, where we analyzed over 370 popular ecommerce websites in Asia Pacific. The full list of companies that are included in this analysis is also included in the reports.

The traffic and engagement data you see here is sourced from a third-party, independent source called SimilarWeb. It uses sources such as local internet service providers, monitored devices, web crawlers, and direct measurement sources to estimate traffic data, time on site, bounce rate, and other metrics.

How is the market growing and which are the fastest-growing verticals?

• In six months, most verticals are seeing high growth in web and mobile web traffic. This is broadly in line with Emarketer’s full-year growth estimate of 29 percent for Asia Pacific ecommerce in 2017.
• Over the past six months, the Food & Groceries vertical has been growing the fastest, with more consumers opting for the convenience of getting their food delivered to their doorsteps.
• On the other hand, the Beauty vertical is the only segment that is experiencing negative growth.

How do engagement metrics compare across verticals?

• For the Beauty vertical, minutes on site and pages visited are less than the inter-industry average. This indicates that O2O and the offline experience are key parts to customers interacting with businesses in the vertical.
• Customers are spending more time on sites and pages in the Food & Groceries vertical. This may be because customers shopping for food and groceries have more products in their basket and hence visit many pages to find all the groceries they need.
• The Home & Electronics vertical saw high minutes on site but low pages per view. This could mean that customers visit ecommerce sites with an idea of what particular piece of furniture or gadget they want and spend time reading product details and reviews instead of browsing through the site to seek inspiration. This kind of buying behavior may be due to the high cost of furniture and electronics, which are typically not impulse buys.
• In the Luxury vertical, pages visited is high and bounce rate is low compared to the average. This could imply that customers tend to browse through luxury product catalogs for inspiration, putting items into their mental wishlist.

How does each vertical draw web traffic?

• Fashion receives a high proportion of traffic from direct visits, while luxury companies do not.