{"id":89156,"date":"2021-08-23T16:52:12","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T16:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/corp\/?p=89156"},"modified":"2025-10-21T14:17:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:17:59","slug":"amazon-vs-walmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/ecommerce\/amazon-insights\/amazon-vs-walmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon vs. Walmart: The Race to the Top"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walmart and Amazon, the largest retailers in the world, brought in nearly $1 trillion in combined revenue last year. Though Walmart\u2019s $559 billion edged out Amazon\u2019s $386 billion, the retailers are neck-and-neck. Who will win in the battle of Amazon vs. Walmart?<\/p>\n

To analyze this nail-biting race and determine which retailer may be the best fit for your brand, we\u2019ll dig into the history, strategies, and digital performance of Amazon and Walmart, pulling in insights from Web Intelligence<\/a>, one of our eCommerce tools for online sellers and brands. Let\u2019s see how the battle plays out.<\/p>\n

A brief history of the two online retailers<\/h2>\n

Walmart<\/h3>\n

Sam Walton opened the first Walmart in 1962 in order to offer shoppers low prices and great service. Proving that his formula was a success, the company went public in 1970 after generating more than $12 billion in sales.<\/p>\n

More recently, Walmart made moves to grow its online retail business \u2014 walmart.com \u2014 and fend off Amazon, which was attracting its customers online. Walmart acquired its eCommerce platform jet.com<\/a> in 2016 for $3.3 billion, which jump-started its competitive advantage in the eCommerce space.<\/p>\n

\"Amazon

Amazon\u2019s market cap surpassed Walmart’s in 2015 (source: Chartr)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Amazon<\/h3>\n

Unlike Walmart, which started as a brick-and-mortar store, Amazon launched fully online with its website, amazon.com. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon as an online retailer specializing in books in 1994.<\/p>\n

However, Bezos always envisioned Amazon as becoming a one-stop shop for everything. Reflecting on this, Amazon has a history of continual expansion. Recent acquisitions include MGM movie studio this year, a small online pharmacy by the name of PillPack, and Whole Foods.<\/p>\n

Amazon also opened Amazon Fresh, a brick-and-mortar grocery store across the U.S. in the opposite trajectory as Walmart which expanded online after starting with physical stores.<\/p>\n

Digital growth<\/h2>\n

Notably, Amazon gets significantly more visitors through direct traffic<\/a> than Walmart worldwide. Amazon generated 57.9% of its desktop traffic<\/a> (5.7 billion) through direct channels vs. Walmart’s 46.8% (465 million). Organic search traffic tells a different story, with Walmart taking the lead. Almost 32% of Walmart\u2019s visitors<\/a> come to the site through organic traffic vs. nearly 25% for Amazon.<\/p>\n

\"Walmart<\/p>\n

Comparing traffic to the two sites over the past six months, we see that amazon.com generated close to six times the amount of traffic than walmart.com. Amazon.com visitors also visited four more pages on average in contrast with walmart.com counterparts.<\/p>\nVisitors to @Amazon website average 4x more page visits than @Walmart #eCommerce <\/a><\/span>Tweet this<\/a><\/span>\n

Although Amazon still sits proudly as the top-ranking eCommerce retailer, Walmart U.S. fell to the third in the top 100 shopping websites in the U.S<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Where does the traffic come from?<\/h2>\n

Both eCommerce marketplaces receive a majority of their traffic from the U.S. Although Walmart has started to encroach on Amazon\u2019s traffic<\/a> from most of the top countries in the last six months, it is most significant in splitting traffic share<\/a> from the U.S.<\/p>\n

\"Top<\/p>\n

Over the past year, there is a heavy overlap between Walmart and Amazon’s unique visitors in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\"Audience<\/p>\n

1. Desktop vs. paid search<\/h3>\n

Although Amazon spends far more than Walmart on SEO, PPC, and paid search marketing in absolute terms, paid search accounts for 12.1% of Walmart’s traffic, but only 3.1% of Amazon\u2019s traffic. In other words, Walmart is more reliant on this channel to drive visitors to its site. is spending significantly more of its resources to protect its brand.<\/p>\n

\"Amazon<\/p>\n

2. Referral traffic<\/h3>\n

Overall, Amazon focuses more of its marketing spend on affiliate marketing<\/a> traffic sources: Referrals make up 6.5% of Amazon\u2019s total traffic vs. 3.1% of Walmart\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\"Amazon<\/p>\n

Both platforms have slickdeals.net<\/a> as one of their top affiliate sites. Amazon captures 78% of its traffic<\/a> from slickdeals.com in the last six months compared to Walmart, which receives almost 22% referral traffic share of its referral traffic from the site. This again shows that both platforms are vying for the same market share.<\/p>\n

For more on Slickdeals’ role in the online retailers’ landscape, watch this video:<\/p>\n