Pakistan’s online retail market is booming and recent estimates suggest that the industry crossed $600 million in 2017.
As the market flourishes, many global leaders are eyeing to invest in the country’s e-commerce sector. Alibaba has stepped up its efforts to secure a strong foothold by investing $184.5 million through Ant Financial in Pakistan.
The world’s largest e-commerce platform by revenue, Amazon, is also looking to invest in Pakistani online shopping scene indirectly by increasing its stake in a local online store.
So as the market continues to grow with positive prospects for the future. Let’s take a peek at which are the most popular stores in terms of visitors.
Note: The ranking is based on the popularity of e-commerce stores in terms of size rather than customer experience or any other subjective criterion.
1. Daraz.pk
Daraz undisputedly gets the top spot. The popularity of the platform has increased due to its multi-category shopping events. You can find almost everything, from sports to fashion and gadgets to fitness, on the platform. According to some reports, Alibaba is in negotiations with Daraz to buy the platform as well.
Kaymu.pk was acquired by Daraz.pk two years ago and now all of the traffic on its domain is also redirected to Daraz.pk.
Daraz gets 15.03 million monthly visits that cement its place in the most visited e-commerce sites rankings just like last year. A visitor opens 4.18 pages on average on each visit. The average duration of each view on Daraz is 3 minutes and 58 seconds. Daraz gets 65.64% of the total views either directly or through referrals and searches through Google and other engines. Only 4.77% of the traffic comes from social media which shows the strong direct brand significance of the company.
2. HomeShopping.pk
HomeShopping.pk dethroned Kaymu.pk to grab the second spot in this year’s rankings.
Despite having the much-needed experience in the online retail sector, HomeShopping has somewhat failed to grow as much as it should have. Its loyal customers have helped it maintain its position in the market but growth has been slow partly due to weak marketing efforts.
HomeShopping.pk isn’t as popular as Daraz.pk but still gets a decent amount of views. The site gets 1.339 million visits every month with an average view duration of 5 minutes and 58 seconds. 2.85 pages are opened by each viewer on average at HomeShopping. Homeshopping’s numbers have improved by nearly 50% over the past few months.
A substantial amount of traffic, 77.44% to be precise, to the site comes from search engines. The platform gets 16.55% visits through direct search and referrals while 3.85% of the traffic comes from social media.
3. Yayvo
Yayvo has jumped 3 places from last year to stand at number 3 on the list. Yayvo saw a big boom in traffic following some great promotional campaigns during Pakistan Super League.
The site attracts 1.088 million views on average every month with 4 minutes and 13 seconds of per view stay on the site. The viewers open about 3.72 pages per visit on the website.
Yayvo does pull up a significant amount of direct traffic that accounts for 41.87% of total visits. Its social media presence is quite satisfactory as well as it gets 9.20% visitors from social media. Apart from that, the website generates 40.84% traffic from search engines.
4. Goto
Goto is a new-comer in the Pakistani e-commerce market. Having started only a couple of years ago, the online retailer didn’t even register in last year’s rankings. However, strong marketing and promotions have brought it straight to the 4th spot on the list.
The retailer gets 900,099 visits a month on average. However, the visits are short and people usually stay for less than 90 seconds and view just 2.40 pages every time. The retailer needs to improve its website design in order to improve engagement.
31.58% and 32.01% of the site’s traffic comes from social media and paid display ads which clearly hints at strong marketing. However, direct traffic is just 12% and search engine traffic barely registers.
5. iShopping.pk
Last year, we mentioned that iShopping lost traffic and performed poorly in our rankings but its increasing number of products might turn things around for them. Some efforts have helped the company as iShopping has improved its ranking from last year’s 7th to stand at 5th this time around.
The website gets 867,733 visits every month with a per-view stay time of 1 minutes and 48 seconds. Each viewer opens about 1.87 pages on the site. iShopping.pk gets its major chunk of traffic from search engines that generate 82.17% of the total visits. The site gets 10.99% visits directly while 3.82% traffic comes from referrals and 2.59% is generated through social media.
6. Symbios.pk
Symbios.pk is mostly known for its Chinese gadgets and accessories and it even crossed iShopping.pk last year in terms of site visits. However, due to a rather not-so-good website design and lack of proper marketing, it quickly came down. The site’s standing has fallen two points down from last year’s 4th rank.
The site, during its peak in November, got more than 2.2 million visits. Currently, the website has fallen below the 1 million mark and gets around 834,768K views on average a month.
The average stay at the website per visit is relatively good as users spend 5 minutes and 46 seconds on the site. A total of 3.36 pages are opened per visit on the website. 82.99% of the total visits come from search engines while Symbios pulls only 1.96% from social media. 13.59% of the traffic comes directly to the website or through referrals.
7. Mega.pk
Mega’s spot improved a spot from last year’s 8th to stand at number 7th this year. The views count on the platform improved drastically as well. The site gets 632,116K visits every month with 2.68 pages opened on average on each view. The platform gets a per viewer stay of 4 minute and 50 seconds.
The website generates 88.98% of the traffic volume from search engines while 9.76% visitors open the platform directly. The social media attraction of the website is relatively low with just 0.59% traffic coming from there. The referrals account for 0.41% of the total visitors coming to the platform.
8. ShopHive.com
ShopHive was once one of the top visited stores, in fact, the top visited online store in Pakistan. However, it lost its pace to the newcomers who had a stronger marketing game. It was 5th last year, however, it has come down to number 7 this time.
ShopHive scores 572,313K visitors a month, an improvement of around 200k from last year. The average visit duration on the site is 2 minutes and 27 seconds with 2.93 pages viewed per visit. On average, 3.11 pages are opened on every visit to the website.
The website gets 82.22% of its total views through search engines. The direct visitors to the site account for 14.13% of the total visits with 2.11% traffic coming from social media.
9. Telemart.pk
The Karachi-based company focus on gadgets and accessories but still stands at number 9 on the list of most visited e-commerce websites in Pakistan. The site retained its spot in the rankings following the departure of Kaymu.pk from the list.
The average stay duration on the website is 2 minutes and 01 second attracting 383,804K views in total per month.
Each user opens about 2.98 Telemart pages while they stay on the platform. A major portion of the visits comes from search engines which account for 56.15% of total traffic. The website has a great social media presence as well that pulls up 22.77% visitors. Apart from that, 17.12% users open the site directly while 3.05% open the platform through referrals.
10. Clicky.pk
Another first-time entrant to our list is Clicky.pk, which has attracted 332,000 hits on average per month. The average viewer stays for about 3 minutes and 17 seconds while each user opens just over 7 pages on the site on average.
With reports of Amazon looking to increase its share in the site and indirectly enter into Pakistan, we expect Clicky.pk to steadily rise through the rankings.
The site generates 32.7% of visitors from search engines while another major contributor of visits is social media that pulls 49.7% visitors. The site generates 14% visits directly while only 0.1% traffic comes from referrals.
Honorable Mentions
There were a lot of stores we couldn’t include in this list because either they aren’t operate in a niche or have some other missing ingredient due to which we cannot compare them with other general ecommerce stores.
These include Alkaram studios, which gets around 690k hits per month, Shoppingbag.pk, which get 527k hits a month and Pakstyle.pk, which get over 600k hits a month. Then there are others like Export Leftovers and TCS Sentiments express which have steadily grown over the past year.
We’ll be compiling a list of the top niche stores in Pakistan soon so keep an eye out if you want to know the top non-general ecommerce stores in Pakistan.
The data to rank the sites is taken from SimilarWeb.
Very informative website for Pakistani customers.