If anyone wants to understand the advantage Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has over rivals who sell merchandise online, he only has to look at traffic data. Amazon has more than twice the number of visitors to its sites than the No.2 company which is Walmart
According to the new comScore Media Metrix Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for October 2013 measure. Amazon sites are the sixth in terms of monthly unique visitors with 110 million. This puts it only ten million shy of huge portal AOL (NYSE: AOL).
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) finishes 25th with total unique visitors of 39.8 million. No matter how strong Walmart’s online offers are, they cannot reach nearly as many people as Amazon.
Amazon has several other advantages, not the least of which is it Prime service. For $79 a year, the e-commerce company offers:
FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items
No minimum order size
Unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with Prime Instant Video
A Kindle book to borrow for free each month from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
For the most part, retail companies have increased what they charge for free shipping, because it so badly hurts their margins. Amazon has found a way to counter that, even if, in reality, it loses money on the process in a way disguised from investors.
Amazon continues to use the Kindle as tremendous advantages. Both the reader and Kindle Fire tablet are considered loss leaders. However, they are portals to services on which Amazon does make money. First and second among those are e-books and the Amazon streaming media service which the company claims has 41,000 TV and movie episodes. The service, as it grows, has become something close to a competitor to NefFlix (NASDAQ: NFLX) which effectively rules the streaming video sector in the U.S.
Walmart is not the only huge online retailer with an online problem. Its primary bricks and mortar competitor Target (NYSE: TGT) only has monthly unique visitors of 25.6 million.
This may seem unusual, but did you know some credit cards can actually help you get OUT of debt faster? It’s true. Every day thousands of Americans are waking up to the secret: using a ‘0% Intro APR‘ card.
Here’s how it works. You find a card that offers a 0% balance transfer feature (not all do, but theses ones are top picks from the editors at FinanceBuzz). Next, you transfer your current balance to this new card, securing ZERO interest payments for the intro term, then you use the savings to pay off debt faster. The math is straight forward, and can save you hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars if used correctly. Find the right card for you by clicking here.
Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.
