PCDataOnline ranks websites, and used to make the information available at http://www.pcdataonline.com. (They have gone out of business, and that site is now the home of a pornography website. My sincere apologies to anyone who unsuspectingly linked to it from this page.) Amway/Quixtar has been bragging since Quixtar opened in September that they are highly ranked by PC Data Online. According to VP Ken McDonald, in a leadership hotline message on September 16, 1999:

"We're averaging 30 to 40 million hits per day. I mean, that's absolutely incredible, and perhaps an even better measurement than hits is page views. We're averaging almost 20 million page views per day. And to put that in perspective, Amazon averages 10.4 million page views per day."

And on October 2,

"We still have the same stats: 30 to 40 million hits a day, 20 million page-views a day"

In an article by Lisa Singhian, AP News Service on September21, 1999,

"Customers have spent a weekly average of between 47 and 50 minutes on the Quixtar site since its launch, according to Sean Wargo, an analyst at PC Data, Inc., which tracks e-commerce activity.

``If you rank the week ending Sept. 11 by average time spent, Quixtar would be at number 20,'' said Wargo. ``I would say that's pretty high. The sites in the top 5 are auction sites, gaming sites, Yahoo and other finance sites."

In a September 10 message to Platinum leaders and above, Quixtar claims:

• "We were ranked #22 of all e-commerce sites on the planet based on the number of unique users
• "We had 45.8 million page views -- that's 63% of what Amazon had!
• "And the average time spent on the site was higher than all the top 25 e-commerce sites except eBay!"

A September 18 message from McDonald:

"according to PC Data Online, an independent web-measuring firm, in terms of pages viewed. As of the week ending September 11, Quixtar was the number 5 e-commerce site on the Web."

Dave Van Andel, Family Matters 9/30:

"As you may have heard, an independent firm that measures Internet traffic reported that Quixtar within days of opening was the fifth largest e-commerce site in the world. That's based on page views of over fifty million a week."

It all sounds pretty impressive, if you're willing to take it at face value.

• We're averaging 30 to 40 million hits per day:

First, let's take a look at "hits" and what that means. A "hit" is simply a request to the server for a particular file. This means that if a "page" has 8 graphic elements, that one "page view" will equal nine hits. (One for the page and eight more for the individual graphics.) I did a random survey of Quixtar pages. I examined eight pages, beginning with the home page and including the pages that a novice Quixtar visitor might be likely to find. The average number of graphic elements per page is 33-1/8. One page I looked at had 67 graphic elements; the fewest was 15 on a page.

So, let's go back and look at the Quixtar hits a little more realistically: 35 million hits per day would translate into just over 1 million page views (1,056,603).That's just a fraction more than one page view per North American Amway/Quixtar distributor per day -- McDonald's claim of 20 million page views per day would seem to be an enormous exaggeration. Not so impressive when seen in those terms!

• "Customers have spent a weekly average of between 47 and 50 minutes on the Quixtar site since its launch. . . If you rank the week ending Sept. 11 by average time spent, Quixtar would be at number 20. . ."

That's because visitors had to spend a lot of time just to see one or two pages!

• "We were ranked #22 of all e-commerce sites on the planet based on the number of unique users"

September

Now we're getting close to some relevant data for an e-commerce site. Number of unique users, and sales, are really the only legitimate ways to measure whether an e-commerce site is successful or not. For the entire month of September, PCData Online ranked Quixtar at number 216, with 1,679,000 unique users. (That's about 1.6 unique users per IBO.) This is behind sites like #182-ranked Pokemon (www.pokemon.com), a children's cartoon, with 1,979,000 unique users; at least nine obvious pornography sites; two virtual greeting card sites; the National Weather Service (NOAA) site; #51, Disney, with 5,027,000 unique visitors; #13, Amazon with 12,256,000 unique visitors; and leader Yahoo with 36,254,000 unique visitors.

I don't know where McDonald got his September 11 claim of being #22 when Quixtar ended the month at #216. In a November 9 press release, PCData Online ranked JCrew and Lands End at #22 and 23 respectively for the month of October. According to that article, Chipshot was the #22-ranked "e-tailer" for September.

October

In October, Quixtar had slipped down the list to #471, with only 995,000 unique visitors -- that means that not even all IBOs visited during October! Quixtar narrowly beat out Cornell University, #475 with 987,000 unique visitors and The University of Virginia, #476 with 984,000 unique visitors. Walmart, at #374 on the list, had 1,173,000 unique visitors. The Pokemon site slipped a little, to #199. eToys was in the #106 position, with 2,911,000 unique visitors. Amazon, with 12,080,000 unique visitors, held the #15 slot, and Yahoo still led the pack with 36,734,000 unique visitors.

November

By November, the slippage was greater. At #634, with only 865,000 unique visitors, Quixtar was behind Cornell University, J Crew, Staples and Office Depot, and just ahead of Astrology Now. Yahoo was again #1, with 34,799,000 unique visitors. The Webring organization, which Amway accuses certain critical site owners of using as part of their non-existent "conspiracy" with P&G, was ranked #91, with 3,793,000 unique visitors. Pokemon logged in at #187, with 2,233,000 unique visitors. Quixtar lagged behind such other sites as the US Navy, US Army, and Martha Stewart (#578, with 919,000 unique visitors).

December

Quixtar slipped further in December, from #634 to #698, and with only 680,000 unique visitors, a decline of about 21%. While the company is claiming increased sales, upwards of $2 million per day according to one (unverified) report, that still means that each IBO only accounts for about $60 in sales per month. The Quixtar site slipped behind Land's End, a silly site called Hamster Dance, Service Merchanidse, and J Crew, among many others. Number 17-ranked E-Bay boasted 12,063,000 unique users.

In January, 2000, Quixtar slipped down to #809 in the rankings, a further decline of 16%. However, their number of unique visitors actually increased, from 680,000 to 782,000. Number one site was still Yahoo!, with over 36 million unique visitors. Quixtar lagged behind other notable sites like Superchicken, Fox Kids, and WCW Wrestling. Maybe the increase in unique visitors means that consumers are actually looking at the site!

Of course, the other important measurement of e-commerce success is sales. It took Quixtar two weeks to reach $1 million in sales, meaning that each IBO ordered $1 of merchandise in the initial two weeks. Later in the month, McDonald crowed about Quixtar's "first million-dollar day." Of course, since Amway/Quixtar are both privately held companies, they are not obligated, nor do they release the types of data that public corporations must. But even if one supposes nothing but million-dollar sales days during the month of October, that's still only $31 per IBO per month -- again, not very impressive figures when you really examine them. Recent statements have talked about $100 million in 100 days. Still only about $1/day/IBO. Now, if they would release figures on actual sales to retail customers, I would be much more interested. Otherwise, it's just more of the usual Amway/Quixtar smoke and mirrors.

February saw another slide. It came it at #1021, a big slide of about 26%, with only 631,000 unique visitors. Since the company is now announcing "nearly 400,000 Quixtar IBOs," this means that on average, each IBO is only bringing a half a visitor to the site during the month. So much for sales to retail customers. . .

There's also some statistical disagreement within the corporate ranks. While IBOs have latched onto the $2 million/day in sales claim, made a couple of months ago, DeVos has stated that sales are "averaging" $2 million/week. That's a pretty significant difference -- in two months time, it's the difference between $60 million in sales and only $17 million.

March saw a slight improvement in unique visitors, although the site rankings slipped to the #1094 position, a very small change. Unique visitors numbered 664,000, a small improvement over February.

Quixtar's rankings improved slightly in April, with the site moving up to #1092, a negligible difference. However, unique site visitors increased to 735,000. This is an increase of about 10%. If the number of IBOs is still about 400,000, this means that each IBO is now accounting for about three-fourths of a site visitor, in addition to themselves.

Quixtar's numbers slumped a bit in May. With only 657,000 unique users, the site slipped into the #1245th position, attracting only 0.8% of web users to the site. This is also a decrease, although a small one, from the month of March, when they had 664,000 unique visitors. With only three months left in the fiscal year, one wonders how much farther those numbers will drop by Quixtar's one-year anniversary on September 1.

Quixtar Statistics Chart

More about Quixtar

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