Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) trails only Amazon and eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) in monthly visitors to the companies’ websites. In February, Amazon got more than 98 million unique visitors to its websites, compared with about 62 million at eBay and around 33 million for Walmart. No other primarily retail sites make the top 50, according to comScore.
Walmart, like Amazon, has an Easter shopping section where the retailer promotes the holiday specials it has. eBay also has collections of goods for Easter, but unlike Amazon and Walmart, eBay does not promote price cuts and promotions.
Free shipping from Amazon kicks in after an order hits $35, or for any purchase if a customer is signed up for Amazon Prime, which now costs $99 a year for new or renewing subscribers. Walmart’s free shipping kicks in when the order reaches $50, or the item can be shipped free to a nearby brick-and-mortar store for pickup.
Amazon cannot afford to lose its massive lead in traffic to either Walmart or eBay. Amazon’s whole business model depends on being the big kahuna in online retail sales. Razor-thin margins and uncertain profitability are overlooked by investors just because of Amazon’s sheer dominance in online traffic. Someday, everyone believes, Amazon will turn all those eyeballs into lots more dollar signs, and the only way that will happen is if Amazon steals traffic from its biggest competitors.
Amazon caught some grief on Thursday when a new report from Greenpeace named the company as the tech world’s biggest polluter.
Shares of Amazon stock traded down more than 5% early Friday afternoon, at $316.88 in a 52-week range of $245.75 to $408.06. Share volume was nearly double the daily average of almost 4 million already.
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