This is always an exciting time of year in e-commerce, and it’s especially interesting this year given all the effects of COVID-19.  So what are we seeing?

Notably, Amazon’s Prime Day being in October, and possibly the resurgence of COVID-19 in recent weeks, seems to have kicked off a re-acceleration in GMV (gross merchandise value) on the ChannelAdvisor platform that continued into November — in fact, November was the highest YoY growth in GMV we’ve seen since May.  Please see important disclaimers regarding the data below.  

Even more interesting is where that growth is coming from.  We’ve seen particular strength on Walmart’s marketplace and what we call the “long tail” of marketplaces we support — sites like Zalando, Newegg, and over a hundred other channels.  Aggregate GMV on our platform from that long tail of marketplaces exceeded GMV from Walmart and eBay in November, making it our second largest channel after Amazon, and monthly YoY growth on this long tail has remained above 100% from April through November.  If you’re only selling on a couple of channels, you’re missing out!

As for the Cyber Week period, we saw the strongest growth in the GMV in the three days preceding Thanksgiving, indicating that demand was pulled forward versus the traditional Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

All eyes are on December and how much demand has been pulled forward, and whether #shipageddon materializes and causes delays.  But, so far, e-commerce has continued to show strength, and we’ve seen an increasingly diverse set of channels drive a lot of that growth.

Important disclaimers regarding this ChannelAdvisor GMV data:

  • This data is based on marketplaces GMV aggregated across our entire customer base globally.
  • This data is not a proxy for overall e-commerce activity or the performance of any individual business, including ChannelAdvisor or any individual marketplace.
  • The data shown above is based on a year-over-year comparison of GMV and is expressed as percentage growth. 
  • All calculations are done in USD. Global currencies are converted to USD using the conversion rate on the day of the order. These results are not normalized to account for fluctuating exchange rates. 

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