Digital 100

Digital 100 - Top 100 Fastest-Growing Online Brands in the U.S.

Discover the winning digital brands of 2021! The globally recognized Digital 100 reveals the top fastest-growing companies in the U.S. for 10 key industries based on year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth. Plus, we unpack the powerhouse digital strategies supercharging their success so you can make the cut next year.

Apparel

Top 5 Apparel Brands:

Shoppers can’t get enough of fast fashion

Brands specializing in fast fashion — affordable, mass-produced clothing inspired by the latest catwalk styles — took over the apparel industry.

Winners for traffic growth in the space include Cider, Quince, Komily, and Lovely Erica. Their strong performance proves that despite the backlash against the industry's environmental impact, fast fashion is here to stay, particularly as inflation drives up prices.

Beauty

Top 5 Beauty Brands:

Fawning over frugal fragrances

Two of our top five fastest-growing websites, MicroPerfumes and The Dua Brand, appeal to price-conscious consumers. MicroPerfumes offers fragrances in sample and travel sizes, allowing shoppers to try multiple scents before shelling out for full-size products.
Inspired by luxury best-sellers but at nearly half the cost, The Dua Brand’s products also appeal to consumers looking to save.

Electronics

Top 5 Electronics Brands:

Smart products signal stellar performance

Brands selling smart devices, like lights, sensors, cameras, and power-generating products for home or on the go dominated the list of electronics winners. As a result, traffic to AUKEY, Govee, and Zmodo climbed higher.
Internet of things (IoT) is also trending. RAKWireless, a “first-class supplier of smart hardware,” took the top spot, with its cutting-edge blockchain and IoT solutions promoting energy efficiency and smart device integrations.

Financial Services

Top 5 Financial Services Brands:

Fringe technology moves to forefront

The top names in this space reflect mainstream adoption of former fringe technologies. Taking the number one spot is opensea.io, which uses blockchain to power its self-proclaimed “first and largest NFT marketplace.”
Axie Infinity, a brand known for gamifying the pursuit of cryptocurrency, landed in fifth place.
Overall, a whopping eight of the top 10 brands utilize blockchain technology, showing that the digital ledger powering crypto has garnered the respect of the 22- trillion-dollar global finserv industry.

Food & Drink

Top 5 Food & Drink Brands:

‘Tis the season to cook (couch potato)

Top brands reflected a healthy mix of websites all about home cooking and fast-rising delivery players. Consumers seemed particularly eager to put on their aprons during the holiday season. Traffic to recipe sites gypsyplate.com and cookingprofessionally.com reached peak levels in November and December.
After all that holiday entertaining, consumers likely needed a break. By January, visits spiked to delivery services like mrbeastburger.com and snacks.com consumers.

Gaming

Top 5 Gaming Brands:

Players turn creators

Gamers don’t just want to play. They want to take part in creating the game.
Brands that spoke to this demand cleaned up in 2021. Traffic to The Sandbox Game site, which provides tools to build avatars, vox models, and games, saw traffic level up. Everskies, which allows gamers to create personalized avatars, also shot higher – taking the second spot on our list.
Eorzea Collection, a site that allows sharing creations, was another gaming traffic winner.

Health & Fitness

Top 5 Health & Fitness Brands:

Omicron spreads online

It may not be a surprise that four of the top 10 fastest-growing websites provide COVID-19 tests or vaccines – covid19criticalcare.com, vaccines.gov, curative.com, and projectn95.org.
Traffic to these sites peaked in December, even though the majority of Americans were vaccinated, illustrating a widespread concern for the highly contagious Omicron variant, particularly before the holiday season.

Real Estate

Top 5 Real Estate Brands:

Making moves to cut out the middleman

Residential leasing site American Homes 4 Rent and new home builder Tri Pointe Homes took two top spots. Each site provides direct listings to clients, reflecting the market’s desire to cut out the middleman in real estate transactions.
Supply chain issues likely also played a part in pushing new home buyers to these development communities to overcome shortages in building materials and delayed building due to the pandemic.

Home Furnishings

Top 5 Home Furnishings Brands

The time at home trend spurs growth

More time indoors in 2021 meant rising interest in home improvement. Three of the top 10 sites on the list were blogs. Upgradedhome.com and homesandgardens.com are both sites flush with articles on interior design and ways to improve outdoor spaces.
Four of the top sites were furniture retailers. Consumers sought out readily available products with supply chain issues and ventured away from traditional retailers like Wayfair or IKEA. Premium furniture seller castlery.com received 8.4M searches in 2021, its first full calendar year in business.

Travel

Top 5 Travel Brands

Theme parks and tropics take over

Traffic to websites of smaller theme parks, Legoland and Knott's Berry Farm, swung up as tourists felt more comfortable bracing crowds to return to roller coaster rides.
For more ambitious travelers with passports and negative COVID results in hand, traffic flew higher to tourist websites visitjamaica.com and discoverpuertorico.com, landing them spots among the top 10 winning travel brands.

Exclusive Digital 100 Insights Report

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Methodology
The Digital 100 is the official list of the fastest-growing digital brands. To identify the 100 U.S. winners, we analyzed websites with over 100,000 visitors for 10 categories, ranking the 100 websites with the largest increase in visitors on desktop and mobile web devices in the U.S. 2021 vs. 2020.