Top Group Buying Websites in South Africa (Updated May 2011)

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?

Author: NickDuncan

Nick is the owner of Code Cabin, founder of WP Google Maps, WP Live Chat Support, and Sola Plugins,

43 thoughts on “Top Group Buying Websites in South Africa (Updated May 2011)”

    1. 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).

    1. Hi Melissa

      I have added Bangoo to the list 😉 Well done on the layout of the site. Looks great.

      Nick

  1. 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!

  2. Hi Nick
    Our platform CityMob launches in May.
    With over 120k likes across FB already – watch this space.

  3. 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!

    1. you sure are right, i rilli wana see them in the top 5 group buying list. UCit rocks, keep it up guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. UCit is an awesome sight!! I have used most of the sights and they have the best deals!! Group buying rocks!! : )

  5. 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

  6. 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.

    1. 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?

      1. 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?

        1. 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… 😉

          1. @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.

          2. We really could turn this into a comparison matrix if we wanted. Then again, would the companies be willing to share sales data?

  7. @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.

    1. @Jess Unfortunately AdPlanner uses an estimation if the website owner has not linked their analytics account to their AdPlanner account.

  8. 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

  9. 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/

  10. 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.

  11. 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

  12. 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. 

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