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A rising e-commerce tide lifted all digital natives in 2020. But there were some storefronts that welcomed more virtual visitors than others.
Time for a traffic citation: SimilarWeb, a web analytics service, exclusively shared its rankings of year’s 15 fastest-growing DTC brands by web traffic with Retail Brew.
- On average, traffic across the 15 brands grew 364% YoY over the period measuring January 9–December 9 in 2019 and 2020.
- Some brands started 2020 with millions of visitors. So while their average monthly visits were higher, their growth rate landed lower on our scorecard.
On to the rankings...Youth To The People, a brand that fuses superfood skincare with social activism, topped our list. Visits to its online store grew 874% YoY.
- The second place brand grew just over half as much. Nonda, which specialized in connected car equipment for 2020’s road trippers, grew 480%.
- Rounding out the top three, lingerie brand Cuup recorded 409% YoY growth.
Francis Scialabba
Playing scattergories
I’d expected a list of toilet paper and frozen pizza brands. But “the range of categories across the top 15 DTC brands shows us that not every winner in 2020 was directly related to the pandemic-driven trends,” Jamie Drayton, lead e-commerce consultant at SimilarWeb, told Retail Brew.
- Apparel and fashion companies occupied one-third of the list: “impressive, given market realities,” Drayton said. Special shoutout to Rowing Blazers, which created a viral marketing moment with an assist from the people’s princess.
- Still, there’s representation from the 2020est of trends, like procrastibaking (Great Jones) and procrastibiking (Peloton).
The big-picture growth secrets aren’t so secret. Drayton said all 15 companies grew with a mix of 1) organic interest and 2) marketing spend across display ads and paid search.
Stakes = high. The top 15 managed to capture wallets in a tight market: only 2.6% of all e-commerce sales this year are estimated to come from digitally native brands, eMarketer forecasts.
That said, many of the brands that won the internet’s visits in 2020 are exploring new distribution channels.