Macy’s Leads The Pack As Top Online Apparel Retailer

With more than double the average monthly visits of JCPenney’s website, Macy’s has been ranked the top eCommerce destination for apparel in SimilarWeb’s latest index. The retailer’s website has 55.9 million average monthly visits, retail news source Retail Dive reported.

Still, Macy’s is losing market share to competitors such as Amazon, according to Coresight Research. The think tank found a decline of 410 basis points in the retailer’s apparel share as its revenues declined by $3 billion from 2012 to 2017. Of survey respondents who said they are spending less at Macy’s than they have in the past, 53 percent of Amazon Prime members reported they shop at Amazon instead, compared to 22 percent of respondents who weren’t members of Prime.

Even so, there are opportunities for retailers like Macy’s in the mobile arena. According to SimilarWeb, more than half of online traffic for general merchandise originates from mobile platforms.

The news comes as Macy’s plans to roll out mobile checkout in its brick-and-mortar stores. The technology, which is powered by the retailer’s mobile app, is expected to be deployed to all of Macy’s full-line stores by the end of the year, CNBC reported.

Through the app, shoppers can scan an item’s barcode as they add it to their carts. As they do so, the app will apply discounts and rewards through the customer’s loyalty account. When it’s time to check out, customers go to a dedicated counter where the cashier makes sure they scanned the correct number of items and removes a security tag.

The retailer has already tested the technology at a store in New Jersey. In addition, Macy’s plans to expand a virtual reality pilot to 60 of its stores. With this technology — which has undergone a trial period at three of its locations in New Jersey, New York and Florida — customers can experiment with moving items around a virtual room through a tablet in the retailer’s stores.