Temu surpasses Shein in the US, but still cannot compete with Amazon

It is learned that according to foreign media reports, under inflation, Americans also love to buy cheap goods, Temu and Shein are working hard to win the favor of young American consumers. Both e-commerce platforms use ultra-low price strategies to attract consumers, but in different ways.

Shein mainly sells fashionable women's clothing. In contrast, Temu has a wider range of products, including not only clothing but also household items, car accessories, electronic products and musical instruments.

The same thing is that Temu and Shein target the same audience of Generation Z consumers. It is worth mentioning that in recent months, the competition between the two sides has become increasingly fierce, and both have filed lawsuits against each other, accusing each other of unfair business practices.

Temu surpasses Shein, and the US e-commerce landscape is changing

Although Temu only launched in the United States in September 2022, it has already surpassed Shein in both site traffic and purchase visits, according to data from Similarweb.

In terms of website traffic, Temu has been higher than Shein since April this year. In August this year, Temu's website traffic was 103.03M, while Shein's was 72.87M.

In terms of purchase visits, Temu (1.43M) successfully surpassed Shein ( 1.27M ) in May this year. In August this year, Temu's purchase visits reached 1.88M, while Shein's was 1.19M. (Purchase visits refer to the total number of visits to the customer purchase webpage)

Advertising is an important reason for Temu's traffic growth. According to estimates by UBS analysts, Temu spends nearly $500 million on marketing and promotions each fiscal quarter, including social media, display advertising and paid search.

According to a research report released by UBS analysts, despite Temu's rapid growth, its proportion of web traffic driven by direct and organic searches is still lower than the industry average and significantly lower than Amazon. This means that Temu is not yet the preferred online shopping channel for American consumers. However, it is worth mentioning that Temu's user retention rate is almost the same as Shein's.

Temu and Shein still have a long way to go to surpass Amazon

Temu and Shein still have a long way to go to surpass Amazon in the e-commerce space. According to Similarweb, 93% of users who visit Temu also use Amazon, while 8% of Amazon users also use Temu.

On the other hand, Shein and Temu also lag far behind Amazon in terms of conversion rate (i.e. the rate at which visitors to a store’s webpage actually complete a purchase). Shein and Temu’s conversion rates are only around 5%, while Amazon’s is close to 12%.

UBS analysts believe that Shein and Temu will not pose much danger to other established e-commerce platforms in the United States, because many users accuse Temu of slow delivery, and some consumers are full of doubts about whether "ultra-fast fashion" such as Shein is environmentally friendly.

Editor ✎ Nicole/

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