Sellercloud 2020 Year-Over-Year E-Commerce Growth Report

Given Amazon’s 2020 performance, it should be no surprise that Walmart’s e-commerce channels also had a strong year for Sellercloud users. Walmart Marketplace and Walmart Drop Ship Vendor (DSV) combined for a 104% YOY increase – a notable spike compared to the 54% YOY increase of 2018-2019. The rollout of Walmart+ and further optimization of the company’s brick-and-mortar e-commerce fulfillment plans⁴ should prove to help Walmart maintain its positive e-commerce momentum into 2021.

While Walmart’s 2020 was certainly noteworthy, both eBay and first-party website sales outpaced the retail giant’s e-commerce output.

In eBay’s case, 2020’s $423 million in GMV reversed a slight YOY dip from 2018-2019. The premier online auction marketplace offered a forward-thinking Up and Running campaign⁵ that helped many newcomers to e-commerce onboard with digital sales. If these new sellers remain on the platform and eBay continues to show a similar dedication to growing both its seller and customer bases post-pandemic, it should mean good things for eBay in the new year.
Perhaps the most eye-opening observations about this data are both the 2020 performance of Sellercloud users’ first-party websites as well as the sales generated through the shopping cart and storefront builder platform Magento. Each of these first-party sales channels produced sales totals that eclipsed both eBay’s and Walmart’s respective 2020 GMV gains.

With so many retailers thrown into e-commerce this year (and the struggles of third-party marketplaces to accommodate them) a growing number of sellers turned to more self-sufficient e-commerce options. As a result, Sellercloud’s Magento users saw a 492% YOY increase in GMV (up from 53% in 2018-2019) and generated over half a billion dollars.
Even with Magento’s performance set aside, Sellercloud users’ 2020 first-party website order numbers were extremely impressive. Not only did the total GMV from users’ website sales nearly double from 2019 to 2020, but 2020’s total order numbers surpassed eBay’s annual order totals for each of the last six years.
It will be important to pay attention to the impact this influx of first-party e-commerce⁶ will have on the industry in 2021 and beyond. Customers and sellers alike have shown a willingness to lean on direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels more so than ever before. As a result, D2C must certainly be considered a crucial component of an omnichannel e-commerce growth strategy moving forward.

One of the most impressive aspects of the growth of the e-commerce industry in 2020 is how it affected channels and marketplaces of all sizes. In some cases, the pandemic transformed diminished brick-and-mortar foot traffic into increased website visits. Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Staples, and Sears all generated notable GMV upticks for Sellercloud users in 2020. Bed Bath & Beyond and Home Depot, in particular, saw 133% and 140% YOY increases, respectively – likely fueled by customer bases spending significantly more time at home than in a typical year.

Online-exclusive channels also saw big gains in 2020 for Sellercloud users. Etsy built on its 149% YOY GMV increase from 2018-2019 with an astonishing 415% jump in 2020 – a two-year proportional increase unrivaled by any other Sellercloud-supported channel of any size. Overstock and Sears were able to overcome GMV decreases in 2018-2019 and make notable positive YOY growth in 2020. Wayfair and Houzz were clearly able to benefit from the homebody economy as people looked to spruce up their abodes just as both Staples and Newegg was certainly able to capitalize on the work-from-home boom. Even Reverb, the secondhand music gear website, received a noteworthy 95% YOY boost to their GMV.

Regardless of what brought them online, this data shows that there are now entirely new populations of customers who have made the shift from in-person retail to e-commerce. Veteran online shoppers have also changed behaviors and begun using the internet to purchase new categories of products for the first time.⁷ If industry projections⁸ are correct, many of the customers who helped generate these exciting growth metrics will be repeat online shoppers in 2021 and beyond.⁹

As a truly omnichannel management platform, Sellercloud ensures that all of the channels where you sell can coexist within the same inventory, warehousing, shipping, and tracking workflows. What’s more, adding new marketplaces and channels into existing workflows is made simpler by both a host of over 120+ API- and EDI-level integrations with leading e-commerce partners as well as a responsive and agile support team ready to help you onboard new ones. Sellercloud is truly an all-in-one, end-to-end e-commerce solution offering a multitude of convenient and dependable features:

• Fully-synced inventory management — Low-stock notifications, automated reordering, dynamic warehouse management, and end-to-end inventory tracking give you peace of mind knowing that your merchandise is always where it is supposed to be.
• Integrations with numerous major channels, business systems, and logistics providers — Rapidly expand your online presence across multiple marketplaces (both 1P and 3P) and distribution channels while also gaining complete visibility into metrics that matter.
• Multi-channel catalog tools — Create, adjust, and optimize your listings from one convenient database that seamlessly syndicates listings across an extensive list of integrated channels.
• Customizable workflows — Easily create workflows to meet your business’s unique needs across all of the channels where you sell and between all the software and cloud-based systems you rely on.