A new survey has determined the top 100 Web sites, ranked by their estimated customer sales as determined by a national survey of Internet buyers.
The top ten sites contain what might be considered the usual suspects in e-commerce: ebay.com was first, followed by Amazon.com; Dell.com; Buy.com; Onsale.com; Gateway.com; Egghead.com; BarnesandNoble.com; CDNow.com; and 10-AOL.com.
According to the findings, almost half of the companies ranked consider e-commerce their primary channel, and none have a selling history older than five years. Twenty-one of the Web sites ranked in the Top 100 are traditional retailers at heart, while 25 of the sites cited are best known as catalog and direct mail operators.
One-third of all Web buyers surveyed report buying from Amazon.com, while 10% made a purchase at BarnesandNoble.com. Among music retailers, CDNow is shopped by the greatest percentage of on-line shoppers, 8.7%, vs. 3.7% at Columbia House and 2.6% at BMGMusic. Overall, combined spending on books and music is estimated to be between $1.4 billion and $1.7 billion.
Just over one-quarter (27%) of all sites offer either computer hardware or software as their core business, according to the survey.
In all, 1,135 households were surveyed and identified more than 700 different e-commerce sites. Web sites offering financial services, automobiles or travel services were excluded from the Top 100 list. On average, each household reported buying from an average of two different Web sites in the past year.
In related news, a new survey from the Direct Marketing Association reports that 85% of all catalogs have a presence on the Internet. Heading the list are firms that market to both consumers and businesses; 94% report that they have a presence.
Seventy nine percent of consumer-only firms have a presence, compared with 71% of business-to-business companies, according to the survey done by the DMA with W.A. Dean & Associates, Inc. Full results from the State of the Catalog Industry Report: 1999 will be released during the DMA’s annual fall conference next month in Toronto.
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