The Top 3 Australian Marketplaces
Although Amazon dominates the US and European marketplaces, it’s eBay that rules down under. eBay has consistently been the most popular marketplace. Indeed, Amazon stopped selling anything in Australia for 5 months in 2018 from its .com site, insisting that buyers use their Australian site instead.
This was deeply unpopular as the AU site had only a limited range of products, so in November Amazon did a U turn and once again allowed deliveries into Australia from the .com site. However it has recently been concentrating on growing the AU site, and boasting that it will dominate eCommerce in Australia within 7 years.
There is also a home grown venue called Catch (as in Catch of the day) which for a long time beat Amazon into third place in terms of revenue.
Amazon has put a lot of effort into publicising its increases in sales in Australia, and you could be forgiven for thinking that they were almost outselling eBay – however this is far from the truth.
Although Amazon has edged into second place, outselling Catch, it is still a long way behind eBay.
In terms of traffic, for the six months June-November 2018:
eBay.com.au
Total visits: 76.41m
Average visit duration: 9m 27s
Pages per visit: 9.27
Amazon.com.au
Total visits: 16.34m
Average visit duration: 7m 50s
Pages per visit: 7.50
Catch.com.au
Total visits: 5.89m
Average visit duration: 6m 29s
Pages per visit: 9.34
I have often thought about opening an account with the eBay site in Australia, but the excessive cost of postage from the UK has always put me off doing this. Are customers in AU prepared to pay the cost for Royal Mail from the UK? If they are then it something I would do right now but I really need to understand what the possibility is of selling before opening another account. My sales on the eBay site in the UK have collapsed, in the last 2 years they have dropped so much it is hardly worth the cost of the monthly shop fee and I used to have a good business on eBay. The main reason seems to be that the site is full of absolute rubbish from China and customers here are just not using it as a result. I have been told this by several customers. My own family have also stopped using it now unless they are looking for something that is second hand.
Hello Sheila, Thank you for your comment. We have found that Australian buyers will pay the charges, if it is something they can’t find anywhere else.