Back in February, murdok posted a couple stories about a competitor to eBay that you may or may not have heard of. It’s called Bonanzle, and it’s been growing remarkably all year.
When we first looked at Bonanzle, we found out that it had been voted the best eBay alternative, and that the site had reached a million listings in six months. In December, the site was quoted as having 170,000 unique visitors.
In a conversation with Bonanzle’s founders, they told me that the number for December was closer to 280,000. That was nearly half a year ago. A quick look at Compete.com data shows that the site has grown quite significantly in terms of unique visitors since then.
In January, Bonanzle’s founders showed me a Google Analytics graph putting the site at about 435K unique visitors. This is nearly twice what Compete showed for January. Compete had Bonanzle at 522K for April.
Bonanzle co-founder Mark Dorsey told murdok the number is closer to 850K. Any way you look at it, that is significant growth.
Now that is nowhere near what eBay gets, but eBay is a very well established brand that has over a decade under its belt. Bonanzle is just a couple years old, and many people have not heard of it. At this rate, however, I think there is a good chance that they will.
Bonanzle Founder Bill Harding says they’re not focused on traffic though. In a recent blog post, Harding says that the company is more interested in the end-to-end buying experience on the site. Recent changes at the site reflect a shift in focus from traffic to such an experience. Harding lists them as follows:
– Item traits for improved item search and browsing
– Item trait suggestions to help build a unique trait ecosystem that further separates Bonanzle from other buying choices, and drives home why we are the best marketplace to find everything but the ordinary
– Remove 2 of 3 steps from checkout process for first time buyers (they can jump directly from the cart to Paypal or Google Checkout when using “Buy now”)
– Efforts spent getting the Instant Messaging connection to work more reliably, so buyers can find sellers that are online
– Related search suggestions, and auto-completion of search terms
The company told murdok that it really doesn’t focus on competing with eBay either. “Our ‘competition’ with eBay is probably something that is paid closer attention to by our users than us,” the co-founders said in a joint email back in February. “That said, we do think that for Bonanzle to matter in such a crowded alternatives environment, we need to distinguish ourselves clearly from eBay and similar sites.”
At this point, it seems the sky is the limit for Bonanzle. Whether they are focusing on driving traffic or not, it will be interesting to monitor the site’s continued growth.
