Group Buying websites have become very popular in the past few months, so much so that every Tom, Dick and Sipho have decided to create one of their own. With the help from a list compiled over at iGeek, I took the time to analyse which of these group buying websites are actually making an impression on the South Africa internet landscape.
*** 23 May 2011 (Latest)
| Rank | Website | Alexa Rank (ZA) | Unique Visitors (AdPlanner) |
| 1 | My City Deal | 50 | 420k |
| 2 | Ubuntudeal | 296 | 14k |
| 3 | WiCount | 302 | 48k |
| 4 | CityMob | 488 | - |
| 5 | Zappon | 524 | 12k |
| - | Twangoo | 896 | 11k |
| - | VuvuPlaza | 943 | 15k |
| - | OneDayOnly | 1258 | 5.3k |
| - | Dealio | 1701 | - |
| - | 24 Hours Only | 1941 | - |
| - | Skoop | 2293 | - |
| - | AllDeals | 2599 | - |
| - | UCit | 5073 | - |
| - | Collective Cow | 8360 | - |
| - | SaleWine | 9636 | - |
| - | Justhenga | 12 228 | - |
| - | Bangoo | 14 623 | - |
| - | GroupBuying | 20 828 | - |
| - | DealsOn | 21 057 | - |
The biggest climber for May was Zappon.
*** as at 30 Mar 2011
| Rank | Website | Alexa Rank (ZA) | Unique Visitors (AdPlanner) |
| 1 | My City Deal | 39 | 350k |
| 2 | WiCount | 248 | 44k |
| 3 | Twangoo | 333 | 27k |
| 4 | Ubuntudeal | 655 | 10k |
| 5 | OneDayOnly | 868 | 7.9k |
| - | Zappon | 295 | (* new) |
| - | Dealio | 1030 | - |
| - | Skoop | 1826 | - |
| - | UCit | 1913 | - |
| - | 24 Hours Only | 1944 | - |
| - | VuvuPlaza | 2559 | - |
| - | Collective Cow | 3252 | - |
| - | Justhenga | 7575 | - |
| - | Bangoo | 7638 | - |
| - | AllDeals | 8131 | - |
| - | SaleWine | 11382 | - |
| - | DealsOn | 13737 | - |
| - | GroupBuying | 19339 | - |
Although Zappon was only recently created, Alexa.com believes its already the 295th ranked website in SA. Pretty impressive.
Which one is your favourite?
About the Author:
Nick is the owner of Code Cabin, founder of PingPong and co-founder of AirWeddings. He has an extensive history in programming and digital marketing and has worked on some of the largest online websites in South Africa. Nick shares his knowledge and insight on his personal blog, nickduncan.co.za.
NickDuncan – who has written 75 posts on Nick Duncan.
Hi Nick,
Can I just jump in and say that all the deals are aggregated on this site: http://www.TodaysDeals.co.za.
Simple interface, easy to see who is offering what and where.
Thanks Eve. Nice idea!
Hi Nick,
Could you perhaps add some of the aggregators. As eve said, there is todaysdeals, yadda, dealmap, and http://www.dealafrica.co.za which I personally use because of it’s neat layout (but all are nice this is just my personal preference).
there is a new one in south africa.. it’s bangoo…
http://www.bangoo.co.za
Hi Nick,
Could you add http://www.bangoo.co.za to your list?
Thanks,
Melissa
Hi Melissa
I have added Bangoo to the list
Well done on the layout of the site. Looks great.
Nick
I’ve only ever used Skoop, Twangoo and Groupon. I like the look of Skoop and they’ve has some good deals so far. Groupon is obviously the biggest, but I’m a little put off that they’re American owned!
Hi Nick
Our platform CityMob launches in May.
With over 120k likes across FB already – watch this space.
Sounds great Luke.. Let me know as soon as its up so I can have a look!
Hiya Nick
CityMob is 2 weeks old. Let’s see the latest rankings
There is an awesome new group buying website called UCit that I am impressed with and have turned my attention to as I watch it grow daily. It promises a rich South African flavour to cater to everyone’s needs and I am excited about the future and all the amazing benefits … which I totally intend to take advantage of!
you sure are right, i rilli wana see them in the top 5 group buying list. UCit rocks, keep it up guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
UCit is an awesome sight!! I have used most of the sights and they have the best deals!! Group buying rocks!! : )
Hi Nick
Thanks for doing the article it gives us great insight, and glad to see we are in the top ten on Alexia Ranking. Great thing about http://www.24hoursonly.co.za. is that we are not a group buying site and the deal that’s online is the deal you get no need to wait for others to want to purchase it
All the best, keep up the great articles
Hi Nick,
Could you add http://www.dealson.co.za to your list?
Thanks,
Ash
Hi Nick – would suggest you do an update on those stats there.
Stats updated 23 May 2011
Nice to see others keeping this space moving, lots of behind the scenes things are happening
Would be awesome to have http://www.dealchecker.co.za added to the mix in this post.
Sure thing bud. Will do it in the next few days in line with the June update
Awesome, thank you
Really? This is 2011 not 1999. People who still use Alexa as a measurement of anything need to have their heads checked. This should be the ‘Top Group Buying sites whose users still use IE6′ list.
Hahhaha, that is SOOO true, but it’s like Page Rank, people don’t know better so it’s what they focus on, thus making it a metric worth measuring against. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you 100%!
How’s SMX?
We all know how sh!t Alexa is hence the attempted inclusion of the AdPlanner statistics.
Apart from getting direct access to the website’s GA accounts, what else can be used to measure website rank/popularity?
Some ideas:
– Facebook likes and Tweets (as suggested by Rafiq last night)
– Amount of backlinks to the site?
– Amount of social mentions vs their sentiment rating?
Well – it’s REALLY easy in case of the group-buying sites where success is very publicly measurable: count the sales. Multiply the successful sales by the sale-price. Everything else is in no way a measure of success, as only sales do count.
I know of some industry players who check the competition every day and keep track of it…
@Randolf – although sales is a very good indication, high sales sometimes have other stories behind them. Sometimes (more so with some group buying sites) vendors don’t want that much sold and are very upset, and refunds are done, but you don’t see that.
Nevertheless, you’re right, to stay in the pack, you do need sales! But not only sales count.
@Nick – I guess you’ll have to give a better overview here, FB, Twitter, Ad Planner, are they on other social media, ranking for certain terms. But I think you wanted to give a rough indication, and you’ve done that well with just the above stats.
Although they’re competition, where’s CitySlicker and Dealify here? Also, there is no way in hell Zappon was the biggest climber, by my checking, they were the largest faller by quite a long shot.
We really could turn this into a comparison matrix if we wanted. Then again, would the companies be willing to share sales data?
Hi!
Thanks for the list of Group Buying Websites in South Africa. Well, we are also in group buying industry. Check out our best group buying deals India. http://www.groupmantra.com
@Nick – where did you get the unique visitors info from? Our Google Analytics shows numbers WAY higher than 14K. Not sure Ad Planner is the best tool here.
@Jess Unfortunately AdPlanner uses an estimation if the website owner has not linked their analytics account to their AdPlanner account.
Hi Nick – We are currently putting together one huge database for all collective buying Companies to use. Smaller Companies are giving us their databases in return for being able to access the big one.
A big plus is that we will be giving the subscribers a share of the profits too. We are currently looking at just over 100 000 subscribers with many still sitting on the fence.
Regards
Hi Geoff,
Can you please email us at ash@dealson.co.za & let us know more about this.
thanks
ash
I’ve created another aggregator site. It’s not quite as flash as the others, but features 23 sites and allows you to filter/subscribe by city, keyword or price.
http://yadda.co.za/
Nice one Neil,
Its great to be able to search by price!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the summary on whats hot in the coupon arena.
Just wanted to let you know that my cousin has launched a new <a href=”http://www.dealafrica.co.za“>daily deal aggregator</a> website. I’m trying to be objective here seeing how he’s family but I really do think its an awesome website. Very convenient and saves you tons of time filtering through all the available deals…tell me what you think. I have inserted the link here. Hope that’s ok. If it doesn’t work then here’s the link again: http://www.dealafrica.co.za – thanks.
When will you be doing another ranking?
You should definitely check out our daily deals aggregator, you can select which categories and cities you are interested in and receive a daily mail with all your email.
http://dealzone.co.za
Hi Nick! It would be lecker, if you could ad http://www.FoodDeals.co.za to the list!
You seem to have missed out http://www.buywithus.co.za – last I heard it had 40 000 subscribers.
We’re just about to launch a South African daily deal aggregator, called DealScout (http://www.dealscout.co.za). Would greatly appreciate it if you could mention on your site. Has comprehensive filtering abilities, daily email and a mobile site.
Many Thanks
We are a new aggregation site that pulls in most of the group buying sites that actually want us to or allow aggregation.
What we have found in the group buying circles, when it comes to aggregation is that there are sites out there that are advertising for the big players in the market and getting nothing in return. Yet they still do it expecting to attract more customers.
This does not help the aggregation sites as these companies are expecting us to advertise for them for nothing. So keep doing what you are doing and all of us will be put out of business.
Our Aggregation site is http://www.mydealgate.com