POPULARITY ISN’T EVERYTHING: HOW THE NUMBERS YOU USE CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION

A new study comparing brand popularity was conducted by experts at e-commerce customer support software eDesk, who used Ahrefs to analyze the average organic monthly traffic of over 110 clothing brands in the U.S. According to the data it analyzed, Nike, Adidas, and Shein are currently the most loved clothing brands in America according to monthly traffic.

According to internet traffic data, American consumers predominantly express interest in performance apparel and affordable style brands. Nike topped the list with 19.64 million average organic monthly visits. The brand is so popular that it has almost double the traffic (96%) of the next-most-popular apparel brand, Adidas, which recorded an average of over 10.01 million organic monthly visits.

This, however, is only part of the picture, as total online traffic is further complicated by ad and affiliate link-directed traffic as well as significant levels of online bot traffic. Malicious internet bots create false traffic for the purpose of fooling online authentication efforts. “Combined, 49.6 percent of all internet traffic in 2023 wasn’t human, as human traffic levels decreased to 50.4 percent of all traffic,” said an Imperva report. “From 2019 to 2023, bad bot traffic steadily increased, reaching 32 percent of total internet traffic in 2023 – the highest ever.”

Another way to look at popularity is to actually compare the sales numbers though this can also be misleading as it gives an outsized perception of brand reach. To explain this simply, success isn’t just about clicks or cash, a single $2000 suit might reach one customer, but $2000 in $100 jeans can reach 20. However, if we do just look at gross revenue alone, we can at least see some places where the traffic patterns overlap with sales figures.

If we stick to the internet, the best numbers we have for US online shopping come from first-party net sales, excluding returns, and including estimations from the ecommerceDB and publicly reported numbers from the companies themselves. It’s important to note that these rankings show multi-brand store sales that are not reflected in brand-specific site traffic like that analyzed by dDesk. The figures for online shopping look as follows:

But even this doesn’t give a full picture; indeed, perhaps there is no “best way” to measure a brand’s success, reach, or popularity. To give one final perspective, we can look at Forbes and their global (not US-specific as the previous lists) list of the most apparel brands by sales, including online, department store, and in-person sales. Forbes based their numbers on earnings before taxes across 3 years, 8% on capital, the maximum corporate tax rate by country, industry role, and price to earnings ratio. Their numbers show the following.

Ray Nolan, CEO of eDesk, had this to say regarding the internet traffic findings from his study, “Web traffic is a powerful metric for understanding consumer behavior and brand influence. In this case, our research shows that Americans are particularly interested in fitness apparel, with four out of the 10 most popular clothing brands being fitness-oriented, which may indicate a steady and growing trend toward healthier habits in the country since the pandemic. While fast- and semi-fast fashion also appear in the ranking, it’s interesting to see that Louis Vuitton, one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands, ranks ninth, even more popular than Zara. High web traffic doesn’t necessarily mean a high volume of sales, but it may indicate that Americans are searching Louis Vuitton for inspiration, even if they don’t purchase.”

All that may be true but, as always, we need to keep in mind the uncertainty principle when deciding how best to absorb this findings. We can paraphrase it as this, “a thing you measure is influenced by the fact you are measuring it at all.” In a world where internet traffic is selling itself on everything from traffic patterns to authentication, what we use to measure success online is fluid and can change at the speed of a fiber optic cable.