<p>As e-commerce players battle it out for buyers' attention, Amazon India has caught up with Flipkart and overtaken Snapdeal in terms of monthly unique visitors in May.<br />According to data from Internet analytics firm comScoreData, Amazon India had 23.6 million unique visitors in May, edging past Flipkart narrowly.<br /><br /></p>.<p>While Flipkart saw 23.5 million unique visitors, Snapdeal had 17.9 million in May this year.<br />An annual comparison shows that Amazon has seen over a 142 per cent jump in the number of unique visitors since May 2014 while for Flipkart, it's nearly 80 per cent surge. For the same period, Snapdeal saw a 90 per cent rise in unique visitors, the data revealed.<br /><br />Interestingly, last year in May, Flipkart was leading by a mile, with more than 13 million unique visitors while both Amazon and Snapdeal were in a tight race with close to 10 million unique visitors to their sites.<br /><br />When contacted, Amazon India declined to comment though it said the repeat rate of customers was "healthy".<br /><br />Industry experts caution that unique visitors are just another metric for e-commerce companies, and the 'loyalty and stickiness' of customers are a more reliable measure to go by.<br /><br />"While unique visitors is a metric to show the growing interest in e-commerce, a better metric to speak about a company's performance would be the number of repeat customers an online retailer gets," Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak, told PTI.<br /><br />For a customer, online retail offers price comparison and available options by 'just a click', he said, and the market is still nascent to speak about customer loyalty, which is a significant aspect of offline retail.<br /><br />Another popular parameter e-commerce companies quote is the gross merchandise value (GMV) to indicate the total sales value reflecting the volume of their business, Singhal said.<br /><br />Currently, Flipkart, the country's highest valued e-commerce company, has said it expects its GMV to touch Rs 76,000 crore in a year.<br /><br />Earlier, the company had said it expects to reach a GMV of USD 8 billion (over Rs 50,000 crore) by December. Snapdeal is also reported to be targeting GMV sales of USD 10 billion (about Rs 63,000 crore) by the end of calendar year.<br /><br />While Amazon India does not share details of its sales, it's offering more than 25 million products for sale through its online marketplace.<br /><br />It reportedly crossed USD 1 billion (Rs 6,300 crore) in sales in September last year while Flipkart reported a GMV of USD 3 billion for FY15. Snapdeal reportedly crossed the USD 3.5 billion mark by May.<br /><br />"GMV is an important metric as far as size and scale of the company is concerned in e-commerce, but it is not the sole metric to gauge the health of business," Singhal said.<br />"In a marketplace model, the revenues for an e-retailer, which are a small margin of the sales, should also be taken into account," he added. <br /></p>
<p>As e-commerce players battle it out for buyers' attention, Amazon India has caught up with Flipkart and overtaken Snapdeal in terms of monthly unique visitors in May.<br />According to data from Internet analytics firm comScoreData, Amazon India had 23.6 million unique visitors in May, edging past Flipkart narrowly.<br /><br /></p>.<p>While Flipkart saw 23.5 million unique visitors, Snapdeal had 17.9 million in May this year.<br />An annual comparison shows that Amazon has seen over a 142 per cent jump in the number of unique visitors since May 2014 while for Flipkart, it's nearly 80 per cent surge. For the same period, Snapdeal saw a 90 per cent rise in unique visitors, the data revealed.<br /><br />Interestingly, last year in May, Flipkart was leading by a mile, with more than 13 million unique visitors while both Amazon and Snapdeal were in a tight race with close to 10 million unique visitors to their sites.<br /><br />When contacted, Amazon India declined to comment though it said the repeat rate of customers was "healthy".<br /><br />Industry experts caution that unique visitors are just another metric for e-commerce companies, and the 'loyalty and stickiness' of customers are a more reliable measure to go by.<br /><br />"While unique visitors is a metric to show the growing interest in e-commerce, a better metric to speak about a company's performance would be the number of repeat customers an online retailer gets," Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak, told PTI.<br /><br />For a customer, online retail offers price comparison and available options by 'just a click', he said, and the market is still nascent to speak about customer loyalty, which is a significant aspect of offline retail.<br /><br />Another popular parameter e-commerce companies quote is the gross merchandise value (GMV) to indicate the total sales value reflecting the volume of their business, Singhal said.<br /><br />Currently, Flipkart, the country's highest valued e-commerce company, has said it expects its GMV to touch Rs 76,000 crore in a year.<br /><br />Earlier, the company had said it expects to reach a GMV of USD 8 billion (over Rs 50,000 crore) by December. Snapdeal is also reported to be targeting GMV sales of USD 10 billion (about Rs 63,000 crore) by the end of calendar year.<br /><br />While Amazon India does not share details of its sales, it's offering more than 25 million products for sale through its online marketplace.<br /><br />It reportedly crossed USD 1 billion (Rs 6,300 crore) in sales in September last year while Flipkart reported a GMV of USD 3 billion for FY15. Snapdeal reportedly crossed the USD 3.5 billion mark by May.<br /><br />"GMV is an important metric as far as size and scale of the company is concerned in e-commerce, but it is not the sole metric to gauge the health of business," Singhal said.<br />"In a marketplace model, the revenues for an e-retailer, which are a small margin of the sales, should also be taken into account," he added. <br /></p>