The use of online platforms has been growing tremendously over the past two years. We can guess why there has been a massive increase in online shopping activities globally. Of course, it is the coronavirus pandemic. Since the pandemic restricts the free flow of movements, many people are left with no option but to shop online. Presently, the world will be more difficult without shopping websites. A recent report reveals the top 10 most popular shopping websites globally for late 2021. Cloudflare, an American web infrastructure and website security company released this list. The company based its result on website visits.
The list shows that American online retail giants dominate the list. However, the list contains two online shopping heavyweights from China. In addition, we also have Japanese and Canadian online retail giants on the list. Let us now take a look at the top 10 most popular online shopping websites globally in 2021
Top 10 most popular shopping websites for 2021
1. Amazon.com
According to Cloudflare’s report, Amazon is the most preferred online shopping platform for shoppers in many countries. Although many people know Amazon as an online shopping website, Amazon is actually an American multinational technology company. It does not only focus on e-commerce but is also involved in cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.
This company is one of the biggest information technology companies in the U.S. alongside the likes of Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. According to statista.com, between January and June 2021, the Amazon.com website had over 15 billion visits with over 2 billion visits each month.
2. Taobao.com
Taobao is actually the No. 1 online shopping platform in China (with respect to visits). According to similarweb.com, Taobao visits between June and November exceed 300 million each month. Taobao, an online shopping platform under Alibaba Group. Founded as a C2C-platform in 2003, Taobao has grown into one of the most used online shops in Mainland China.
Similarweb also claims that about 80% of Taobao’s traffic is from China. Hong Kong and Taiwan account for about 8% while the U.S. accounts for 2% of its overall traffic.
3. Ebay.com
As one of the early pioneers in the online shopping industry, eBay is still popular with online shoppers. This online store is an American multinational e-commerce corporation based in San Jose. It was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995. In terms of traffic, this platform easily gets over 750 million visits every month according to similarweb.com. However, it ranks below Taobao for this year.
Just like Taobao, Ebay’s traffic is mostly from the U.S (almost 80%). Russia, Mexico, Canada, and the U.K are amongst the top users of eBay.
4. Walmart.com
The US-based retail giant Walmart is known for its physical stores, but Walmart.com is also gaining popularity among online shoppers. According to statist.com, since May 2019, Walmart traffic has been over 300 million visitors every month except for February 2020 where it had 294.5 million visitors. For some months, its monthly visitors exceeds 450 million.
Walmart Inc. operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas.
5. JD.com
In the fifth position is the popular Chinese e-commerce platform, JD.com. Even Tencent, Walmart, and other companies hold shares in the platform. According to similarweb.com, JD’s monthly traffic easily exceeds 150 million. However, it gets as high as 200 million in some months.
Of course, we expect most of its traffic to come from China. Over 90% of its traffic is from China. JD.com, Inc., also known as Jingdong (formerly 360buy) is a strong competition for Alibaba-run Taobao.
6. Shopify.com
Canadian online platform, Shopify is the sixth most popular shopping website in the world. Unlike the other retailers above, Shopify traffic is way below 100 million monthly. According to similarweb.com, Shopify has over 50 million monthly visitors. In its good months, it could get up to 60 million. However, Shopify visits seem to be very diverse. Its home country, Canada, accounts for only about 5% of its traffic according to similarweb.com.
Most of its visits are from the U.S. (over 35%) with China, Australia, and the U.K contributing about 5% each of its monthly visits. Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.
7. Bestbuy.com
North American home appliance and electronic retailers, BestBuy ranks seventh on the list. According to similarweb.com, most of its visits (over 90%) are from the U.S. This online shopping platform also gets over 100 million visits every month. However, similarweb’s data shows that in November 2021, its visits exceed 200 million.
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota.
8. Target.com
The US retail giant Target is also very popular, ranking 8th on the list. This shopping platform is almost entirely a U.S. online shop as 96% of its traffic is from the U.S. However, according to similarweb, this shop easily gets over 200 million visitors every month. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Target is the eighth largest retailer in the United States and a component of the S&P 500 Index.
9. Rakuten
Japanese e-commerce giant, Rakuten, ranks 9th on the list. Founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997, Rakuten Group, Inc., is a Japanese electronic commerce and online retailing company. This online shopping platform has its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Similarweb’s data shows that Rakuten’s monthly visits are about 40 million. However, in November 2021, this number exceeded 60 million.
Interestingly, the similarweb’s data shows that only 3% of its traffic is from its home country, Japan. Also, most of its traffic is from the U.S (over 76%) and France (almost 15%).
10. The Home Depot
The Home Depot (also known as Home Depot), an American home improvement retailer. This online shopping website ranks among the top 10 most popular online shopping sites in the world in 2021. Headquartered in Cobb County, Georgia, it is also the largest home improvement retailer in the United States. It mainly supplies tools, construction products, as well as services.
Conclusion
It is important to note that the top 10 ranking of the most popular online shopping sites globally is from Cloudflare. However, the traffic values for each site are from either similarweb or statista. Also, Cloudflare’s data is for late 2021, thus, it does not consider the entire year.
