Temu was among the fastest-growing large websites in the US last year, according to a new analysis by Similarweb.
The shopping destination from Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo Holdings saw web and mobile traffic increase by more than 700% year over year, reaching an average of 92.2 million monthly visits.
When considering only websites with more than 10 million monthly visits, Temu came in second only to OpenAI, which saw its traffic grow by 2,690% in 2023 as AI exploded into the mainstream.
"There's a recognition that when you're a large website already, it's hard to generate significant growth," David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb, told Business Insider. "But Temu pretty much came out of nowhere."
Temu is headquartered in Boston and is known for extremely low-priced items like $4 water bottles and $8 running shoes. It keeps prices low by shipping directly from manufacturers to individual customers, avoiding the usual duties and taxes by using a provision in US law called de minimis.
Temu has spent big on advertising as it has grown a foothold with American shoppers. Temu's ad spend grew 1,000% between January and November 2023, according to MediaRadar. The ad intelligence company told Modern Retail that Temu spent an estimated $517 million on US ads between September and December 2023. 76% of its budget was on social media ads. Temu also plans to run a Super Bowl ad for the second consecutive year.
Temu wasn't the only site with roots in China to score highly on Similarweb's ranking. AliExpress, the Alibaba-owned online marketplace, was in third place behind Temu with year-over-year traffic growth of 290%. AliExpress was launched in 2010 but still saw significantly less traffic than Temu in 2023, with an average of about 24.2 million monthly visits.
"We start to think of the market as being relatively settled and stable, and yet this huge growth is still possible," Carr said.
The landing page for Shopify's Shop app also made a strong showing on Similarweb's list, coming in at No. 13. It was visited more than 45.8 million times a month on average in 2023, with 124.4% growth year over year. The website, shop.app, allows users to search for products from among Shopify's millions of merchants. This particular Similarweb analysis does not consider app usage, so the numbers could also reflect users visiting the landing page before ultimately deciding to download the Shop app.
Shopify's homepage, meanwhile, got 35.3 million visits a month, according to Similarweb.
Besides commerce, security, and privacy were common themes on Similarweb's list. A number of ad blockers performed well, as did Proton and Duo Security.
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