How Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite Decoded Turkish E-Commerce Landscape

In most markets, reports are published, shared briefly, and then quietly archived. The Marketplace Performance Index for Brands 2025 – Turkiye followed a very different path. Designed not as a one-off publication but as a strategic instrument, the report evolved into a reference framework for brands, retailers, and ecosystem partners navigating one of Europe's most complex e‑commerce environments.

This success story is not about individual brand wins. It is about how Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite translated marketplace complexity into clarity, transforming large-scale data into a shared decision-making infrastructure for Turkish e‑commerce.

The Challenge: Growth Without Clarity

By 2025, Türkiye's e‑commerce ecosystem had reached a point where growth alone was no longer a meaningful indicator of success. E‑commerce accounted for nearly 20% of total retail, with the sector growing at a compound annual rate of 90.82% between 2019 and 2024. Marketplaces such as Trendyol and Hepsiburada had become the default commerce layer, used by the vast majority of digital consumers.

Yet despite this growth, brands faced persistent structural problems:

• Strong campaign performance failed to lift baseline sales

• Increased visibility did not reliably convert into sustainable demand

• Margin pressure intensified despite rising GMV

• Internal teams lacked a shared, objective view of performance

• Existing dashboards focused on isolated KPIs—sales, traffic, or campaign ROI—without explaining why similar brands achieved radically different outcomes under the same market conditions.

What was missing was an objective, comparative, execution-focused framework capable of separating market effects from brand capability.

Metheus Consultancy & Mindsite's Strategic Contribution: Redefining "Performance"

Metheus Consultancy approached the challenge by reframing the problem itself. Rather than asking how much brands sell, the project asked a more fundamental question: how well brands operate within marketplace algorithms.

Partnering together, Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite developed a proprietary big data modelling algorithm that transformed over 400,000 SKU-level data points into actionable intelligence. The result was Türkiye's first comprehensive Marketplace Performance Index for Brands, covering 101 brands across seven categories and analysing performance across Trendyol and Hepsiburada over a defined three‑month window.

As Emre Cetin, Managing Partner at Metheus Consultancy, articulated in the report's foreword: "At Metheus Consultancy, we have developed a comprehensive index that redefines true performance on marketplaces, using our big data modelling algorithm that processes data points from hundreds of brands and hundreds of thousands of SKUs. Visibility, pricing, competition, content management, consumer engagement, and store operations are now comparable and measurable under one roof."

This reframing shifted the conversation from outcomes to capabilities.

Methodology: Five Dimensions of Marketplace Excellence

The strength of the index lay in its multidimensional design. Instead of relying on topline metrics, Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite structured performance around five interconnected dimensions, each capturing a critical layer of marketplace execution.

1. Visibility & Digital Shelf Performance

The algorithm measured organic and sponsored product visibility across 250 strategic keywords, revealing that only 10% of brands achieved meaningful shelf share above 10%. Category leaders emerged not through advertising intensity alone, but through structurally strong digital shelf presence.

2. Product Content Management

Content quality proved to be a major differentiator. Beauty & Skincare brands averaged 129-word product descriptions, while Fashion & Sportswear lagged at 56 words, highlighting a substantial optimisation gap with direct implications for conversion and algorithmic ranking.

3. Pricing & Competitive Positioning

Buybox dynamics exposed sharp category contrasts. Fashion & Sportswear brands achieved 93% buybox win rates, while Home & Personal Electronics brands averaged just 37%, underscoring how pricing discipline and competitive alignment directly influence visibility and sales stability.

4. Consumer Engagement

Engagement metrics—favourites, ratings, and reviews—emerged as powerful trust signals. Beauty & Skincare led with 25,786 average favourites per product, compared to 1,567 in Fashion & Sportswear, demonstrating how consumer interaction amplifies long-term performance.

5. Store Performance & Operations

Operational excellence proved inseparable from brand perception. Health & Nutrition brands achieved 87% catalogue availability with 7‑day restocking cycles, while Fashion brands struggled with 60.4% availability and significantly longer replenishment times—directly impacting algorithmic exposure.

Top Insights That Changed Market Thinking

Several insights consistently reshaped how brands interpreted their own marketplace performance:

• Visibility is not an advantage by default. High traffic without content depth, pricing stability, and operational readiness diluted conversion potential.

• Execution consistency outperforms campaign intensity. Brands with disciplined pricing and content systems demonstrated healthier growth curves than those dependent on constant discounting.

• Category leaders are structurally different. Top performers executed differently—not more—aligning organisation, operations, and digital shelf strategy with marketplace mechanics.

• Relative benchmarking reveals hidden gaps. Many brands believed they were competitive based on absolute sales, until index-based comparison exposed structural weaknesses masked by overall market growth.

These insights, developed jointly by Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite, moved discussions from tactical optimisation to strategic redesign.

From Analysis to Action: Strategic Frameworks

Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite deliberately extended the index beyond diagnosis. As İsmail Arapzade, Co-Founder & CEO of Mindsite, explains: "At Mindsite, we believe that no strategy unsupported by data is sustainable. We view this report not merely as an analysis, but as a guide that brings together data-driven thinking and business partnership."

Insights were translated into a three-horizon strategic framework:

• Short-term quick wins focused on digital shelf optimisation, targeted advertising for high-potential SKUs, buybox stability, and customer response speed.

• Mid-term initiatives addressed visibility monitoring systems, ROAS-based media allocation, demand forecasting to reduce stock-outs, and executive dashboards for performance governance.

• Long-term transformation priorities centred on integrating marketplace strategy into corporate OKRs, aligning omnichannel operations, and leveraging AI-driven automation across pricing, content, and media.

This structure enabled brands to act immediately while building toward durable competitive advantage.

Ecosystem Impact and Industry Recognition

The report's influence extended beyond participating brands. Industry leaders recognised the contribution of Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite to creating a more transparent, measurable marketplace economy.

Emre Ekmekçi, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at ETİD (The Electronic Commerce Business Association), noted: "I believe this report will contribute to decision-makers managing marketplaces more consciously, teams coming together around a common performance language, and brands positioning marketplaces more strategically in their medium- to long-term plans."

Yomi Kastro, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Inveon Digital Commerce Solutions, added: "This report provides an important reference for the sector by examining the marketplace performance of leading brands in the Turkish e-commerce ecosystem using a multidimensional approach. From Inveon's perspective, this analysis provides a valuable perspective on how brands can transform their omnichannel strategies into a stronger structure and how they can create a competitive advantage by using data and AI technologies more effectively."

These endorsements highlighted the index's role in translating fragmented marketplace signals into a readable, actionable framework—reinforcing Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite's position as thought leaders in data-driven growth strategy.

Looking Forward: Insight as Infrastructure

This inaugural edition, produced by Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite, established a foundation for continuous marketplace intelligence. Future iterations will incorporate emerging dynamics such as retail media evolution, AI-driven content automation, and deeper omni-channel integration.

In an environment where brands live by algorithms and compete for fleeting consumer attention, the Marketplace Performance Index provides something rare: a stable compass.

This is the Metheus Consultancy and Mindsite difference—turning complexity into clarity, and insight into infrastructure. Explore the full report here.