Fascinating Amazon Statistics UK Edition [2024]

Over 25 years ago, Jeff Bezos started Amazon as an online bookshop. According to Amazon’s book sales statistics, Bezos was able to sell his books in 50 states and 45 countries in the first two months. Since then, it has flourished into the world’s largest e-commerce retailer that sells everything under the sun.

Today, Amazon is a household name and synonymous with online shopping. It has broadened its target market to cover all types of customers in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, online shopping has become even more popular, resulting in Amazon’s stocks soaring.

“What’s dangerous is not to evolve.” – Jeff Bezos

Amazon Statistics UK

Amazon.co.uk is by far the biggest online marketplace in the UK, followed by Tesco and Argos.

Around 86% of people in the United Kingdom shop at Amazon. About 70% of people shop on Amazon at least once a month, while 17% use the online marketplace weekly.

According to Amazon’s sales statistics, the net sales of 2020 in the UK were an estimated 26.5 billion dollars. That was a significant accomplishment since 2010, when the company’s net sales were just $3.9 billion.

The total number of desktop and mobile website visitors on Amazon UK was 579.5 million (60 million more from October) in November 2020. That makes November the month that saw the largest number of Amazon visitors. In 2019, Amazon was the most visited retailer website on mobile phones alone, with over 36,000 unique visitors.

With revenue of $26.5 billion, the United Kingdom has become the second-biggest European market for Amazon. The number one spot goes to Germany, which surmounted a total revenue of $29 billion in 2020.

Some of the biggest rivals for the online marketplace in the United Kingdom are Tesco, Argos, Sainsbury’s, Currys, John Lewis, Ocado, Marks & Spencer, and Asda. For Amazon Prime, the biggest competitor is Netflix which has over 15 million subscribers in the UK.

As of May 2020, Amazon sold over 600 million products in the UK, which is a significant increase compared to the 370 million sold products in 2018.

According to Amazon seller statistics, there were 281,257 sellers in the Amazon UK marketplace in 2019.

According to Amazon demographics in the UK, younger customers make a big chunk of Amazon Prime’s subscribers. 63% of people aged 16 to 24 years have Amazon Prime, while 52% of people aged 25 to 34 years are subscribers.

Amazon Statistics UK: Marketplace

According to Amazon seller statistics from 2019, 59% of the top UK Amazon sellers were Prime enabled sellers. This number has shown a steady increase from 2016 to 2019.

Based on Amazon stats UK, there were over 16,000 new sellers in Amazon UK in 2020. That shows a sharp increase from 2017 to 2020.

Currently, Amazon has a market share of over 30% of the United Kingdom’s e-commerce market. This figure is up from the 2018 figure of 28.8%. That makes the UK the third-largest e-commerce market in the world after China and the US.

According to the feedback on the seller’s page, musicMagpie is the top-ranking seller on Amazon in the UK. The seller has received over 200,000 feedbacks from buyers in the past 12 months. The feedback is one indicator of the number of sales of an Amazon seller, even though the total number of sold products will generally be much higher than the number of feedback.

Amazon Statistics UK: Devices and Services 

According to Amazon Prime statistics, the number of households in the United Kingdom who use Amazon Prime grew to 10.1 million in the third quarter of 2020. In comparison, the number of households in the UK in 2015 who had subscribed to Amazon Prime was just 1 million. That makes Amazon Prime a formidable competitor to Netflix, which has over 15 million subscribers in the UK.

Amazon Prime Video is an SVOD service run by Amazon. Amazon user statistics show that people spend an average of 5 hours and 22 minutes a week watching Amazon Prime Video in the UK. Compared to the overall population, Millennials between the ages of 18 and 34 spent less time on Prime Video with weekly consumption of 4 hours and 54 minutes.

Amazon stats showed 109 thousand Prime Video downloads to iPhones in the UK in February 2020.

The most popular voice-activated speaker brand in Great Britain was Amazon Echo. According to Statista’s survey, 79% of respondents said they owned the speakers. Additionally, 13% of the respondents also said they used Google smart speakers.

According to Amazon statistics, there were 91.7 thousand Amazon Alexa downloads to the iPhone in February 2020 in the UK.

In February 2020 alone, there were 124 thousand Amazon Alexa downloads from the Play Store to Android devices in the United Kingdom.

Amazon Statistics UK: Logistics 

Amazon’s turnover rate in the United Kingdom was 4.8 billion pounds in 2020. Amazon UK Services Ltd is responsible for the online marketplace’s distribution centres in the UK and has consistently increased its turnover throughout the years, with figures for the latest year being 44 times greater than those in 2009.

As of December 2018, Amazon UK Services Ltd showed a record profit before taxation of 75.3 million pounds. That is three times the figure reported in 2016, showing constant adoption and growth of Amazon in the United Kingdom.

Amazon employs over 40,000 people in the United Kingdom, creating its logistics and warehousing workforce throughout the country. The company also recruited over 20,000 seasonal workers for the 2020 holiday season, as well as 700 apprentices. In just ten years, Amazon UK has exponentially increased its workforce, which was 1,872 in 2009.

Amazon owns and runs 21 distribution centres in the UK, making it its biggest market in Europe. With over 2 billion pounds in sales in 2018, the company represented a 200 per cent turnover growth in just three years.

Impact of COVID-19 On Amazon Usage in the UK

Amazon was one of the very few big winners during 2020 since people were afraid to visit brick-and-mortar stores and preferred to use online means to get products. As a result of the heightened demand, Amazon announced it would increase its workforce in the UK by one-third.

Furthermore, the company hired over 3,000 more employees in its UK sorting centres, warehouses, and delivery stations and a further 7,000 workers in the final quarter of 2020.

The company expected to finish the year with 31.1 billion pounds, which was over 2 billion pounds more than their initial estimate before the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Wrap Up

In the highly competitive world of e-commerce, Amazon is a marketplace that online merchants cannot ignore. Not only is its product portfolio ever-increasing, but it also successfully steals market share from brick-and-mortar stores.

In 25 years, Amazon has successfully grown into the most valuable brand in the world, which offers unlimited opportunities to sellers from every industry.

“Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.” – Jeff Bezos