Research

The Online Retail Radar

A monthly, anonymized read on what online stores actually do, from RivalSweeper's monitoring of ecommerce storefronts. Free to cite with attribution.

Editions

• The Online Retail Radar: August 2026

  Published 2026-09-13. Sample: 579 storefronts read for payment methods; 875 newly launched brands.

  Covers: express wallets, named shipping carriers, new-store domains, suspected decoy listings.

• The Online Retail Radar: July 2026

  Published 2026-09-15. Sample: 965 brands monitored, 841 storefronts analyzed.

  Covers: languages and currencies, catalog adds versus removals, category mix.

• The Online Retail Radar: June 2026

  Published 2026-08-09. Sample: 667 brands monitored, 572 storefronts analyzed.

  Covers: languages and currencies, catalog adds versus removals, category mix.

Methodology

• Source: RivalSweeper's automated monitoring of the public websites of the ecommerce stores it tracks.
• What is read: public storefront pages only (checkout options, policy and footer text, product pages). No logins, no private or customer data.
• Populations: each figure counts only the stores where that signal could be read, and each edition states its sample size. Shares are of that population, not of all monitored stores.
• Not a survey: the store set is RivalSweeper's monitored base of ecommerce stores, not a random sample of all online retail.
• Anonymized: results are aggregated; no store or brand is named.
• Limits: shipping carriers are the weakest signal (few stores name one publicly), and detection can miss options that only appear deep in checkout.

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