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When talking about top 10 e-commerce sites in the world  by monthly unique visitors, you will most likely think of Amazon and eBay, but for some of you there may be some surprises in the top 10. Yes, the number 1 is not Amazon, but Taobao from China! The truth is that there is plenty of competition out there – especially in Asia!

Have a look at this list of top 10 e-commerce sites in the world:

Brand Name   Montly (Cookie) Unique Visitor Location
1 Taobao                                    601,450,542 Hangzhou
2 Amazon                                    524,470,572 Seattle
3 eBay                                    267,904,800 Bay Area
4 Alipay                                    104,530,651 Hangzhou
5 Alibaba                                    106,760,063 Hangzhou
6 Rakuten                                      65.012.387 Tokyo
7 Flipkart                                     64,870,673 Bangalore
8 Etsy                                      44,289,271 New York
9 Fiverr                                      53.670.235 New York
10 Snapdeal                                      30.232.183 New Delhi

The King and the Queen of the Top 10 e-Commerce site

Amazon and eBay are left behind by the Chinese Taobao, which is actually owned by the Alibaba Group. That means that three of the top five (that’s Taobao, Alipay and Alibaba) are all part of the same huge company, which started in 1999 with Alibaba.com (a B2B platform) and some five years later launched Taobao (C2C platform) and Alipay (payment platform).

The Countries

In the top 10 e-commerce sites of the world, China, India and the USA are the most populous countries of the world, so it makes sense for them to rank amongst the top 10 companies, but Japan is a bit of a surprise. However, turns out that the Japan-based Rakuten (founded in 1997) operates globally (having acquired companies in the US, Canada, UK, etc.) and has even used English as its main language since 2012. Ever heard of Play.com, Kobo or Buy.com or ? Well they’re all part of Rakuten now.

The Outsiders

Apart from Amazon and eBay, two more US-based companies have, Fiverr and Etsy, made it onto the list and both of them are quite different from the rest. Etsy primarily trades handmade and vintage items from small producers and Fiverr  offers tasks and services instead of physical items.
Fiverr is the one that have less employees, more or less 100, a big difference with the 97.000 people of Amazon army!

In the top 10 ecommerce of world India grow fast

The list of Top 10 e-commerce sites ends with two India-based companies, both of which are fairly new players (founded in 2007 and 2010). Snapdeal actually started off as a daily deals platform, like Groupon.com, but later transformed into an e-commerce marketplace, selling a plethora of goods for the increasing number of Indians buying things online. eBay has invested in and partnered with Snapdeal. Flipkart was actually founded by two previous employees of Amazon and also started by selling books, but soon expanded into other goods. An interesting factor behind Flipkart’s success is, that it offers cash on delivery as a payment option (and that option is chosen in approximately 60% of transactions).

It will certainly be interesting to see how Amazon and eBay will handle the ever-growing competition from emerging markets.