Top 5 online retailers, ranking based on annual e-commerce sales.

Obviously, the development of internet has significantly changed how people lives, including casual activity likes shopping. In the last decades, revenue of online retailers have increased significantly and become a powerful selling machine in the industry. The uncountable profits and potential of E-commerce resulted in the movement of entrepreneurs from physical to virtual retail.

Moreover, total revenue in E-commerce is already at significant levels because traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have spent more efforts on online stores, and the expectation is E-commerce sales will continue to grow by 10 to 12 percent a year. For the top 25 online retailers, total annual sales volume is $159 billion and there are 18 over 25 brands that have built traditional offline stores and pushed online channels over the past five years. In addition, China has surpassed the U.S. in total income of online retail, and Europe is far behind.

In order to highlight the landscape of E-Commerce, here is the top 5 brands who are leading in volume of online sales.

Alibaba

Alibaba is a huge Chinese E-commerce company that recently go public in the U.S. Founded in 1999, Alibaba now occupies almost Chinese E-commerce market by controlling 80% of the industry. China has a population of 1.4 billion people, an incredible customer base, and Alibaba owns about 300 million customers, it is not very surprising because the portion over total population is only around 21.4%. In 2016, Alibaba earn over $11 billion for net income, it is nearly triple the number of previous year. Obviously, China has great potential for E-commerce, it explains why Alibaba ranking at the top of the countdown and shows the amazing scale of this brand.

Amazon

In spite of ranking in the second position of the countdown, Amazon is still a major league player in the global online retail market. Being well-known for its customer responsiveness and the wide range of products, Amazon continues to be at the top of E-commerce industry in the America. Amazon total sales in the recent year is: $67.9 billion, that creates the unbelievable distance between Amazon and the next position in the list regarding worldwide online sales.

Apple

Apple is very popular multinational corporation set in California with high-tech products such as iPhone, iMac and iPad… However it is still a big surprise in the research because Apple don’t have plenty of product lines as the two E-commerce giant above. It surpassed other companies and managed to get to the second place in the list of the biggest American online retailers. The reason for Apple’s amazing development is that it had a 24% increase in sales in comparison with the previous year. Moreover, the digital sales from iTunes’ Music and App Stores contribute a big part to total revenue of Apple. The hardware sales at the Online Apple Store also add up to create the combined sales which helped the company rank this high. Overall, Apple’s online sales accounts for $18.3 billion, the result comes from its successful strategies in product innovation and brand loyalty.

Staples

Staples is an American multinational retailing corporation, products of Staples is office supply with over 3,000 stores in 26 countries. Its online sales reach $10.4 billion, an impressive number for an office supply chain retailer. Like many big brands in retail industry, Staples has done very well many campaigns to raise customer awareness. Moreover, other unique features that labels Staples as an exceptional business are their online ordering systems and the loyalty of customer. Both in physical stores and online, this company still takes the lead of office supply businesses.

Wal-Mart

In the past, Wal-Mart used to be ranked as the biggest E-commerce brand in the America, but not anymore. This online retailer is still great at customer awareness and community connection. With the large system of offline stores has built an amazing customer data for their e-commerce channel. Wal-Mart total online sales recent year is approximately $10 billion.