Audience for Temu and AliExpress drops in France during Q2, Shein remains stable

Paris - The number of visitors to the Temu and AliExpress websites significantly declined in France during the second quarter. This drop occurred even before the implementation of the three euro European tax targeting small parcels, Fevad and Médiamétrie revealed on Wednesday.

“While the overall audience for the sector remains at a very high level, Temu, Shein and AliExpress have all recorded a decline in their monthly traffic,” noted the Federation of E-commerce and Distance Selling (Fevad) and audience measurement specialist Médiamétrie Netratings.

Of these three Asian platforms, which are in the top 20 most visited e-commerce sites by French consumers, Temu recorded the sharpest decline.

The Chinese-origin 'bazaar-style' site, in fourth place, saw a 12.7 percent drop in visitors between the first and second quarters. It was followed by AliExpress, in 11th place, which saw its unique monthly visitors fall from 15.9 million in the first quarter to 15.1 million in the second. Traffic for Shein, in ninth place, remained stable over the period but “also declined year-over-year, from 4.4 to 3.7 million visitors”.

These three sites are accused of environmental pollution due to the volumes they place on the market and of unfair competition towards European companies. Since July 1, they have been required to pay a three euro European tax on each product category sent in their small parcels from China.

Since its implementation, imports of these packages have dropped by 30 to 40 percent in the European Union, the Ministry of the Economy announced at the end of August, citing a figure from French customs.

“The third-quarter results will allow us to observe any effects on their traffic from the new customs tax that came into effect on July 1,” Fevad stated in a press release. The federation qualified that “this decline, however, does not call into question the influence of these platforms, which maintain very high audience levels and a significant place in the habits of French consumers”.

Furthermore, with 41.2 million unique visitors per month, Amazon comfortably retains the top spot in the ranking, ahead of Leboncoin, which attracts 32.1 million monthly visitors. They are followed by travel specialist Booking.com, Temu and the Lithuanian second-hand fashion site Vinted.