Hitwise, an online "competitive intelligence" service, has more interesting statistics about online holiday shopping. According to Hitwise, Shopping and Classifieds sites claimed an unprecedented 9.1 percent of total U.S. Internet visits between November 1 and December 25, 2004, a 25.6 percent increase versus the same period in 2003. The peak day to shopping and classifieds websites was Nov. 25, Thanksgiving Day.

But, it reports that 2004 holiday season daily traffic patterns achieved a near-perfect correlation with last year's daily patterns. Hitwise says for the 2003 and 2004 holiday-season, peaks in traffic occurred on weekends, with Sundays typically stronger than Saturdays. The two exceptions are Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

Visits to eBay peaked on November 10, compared to December 9 for Dell and December 11 for Amazon.

Conversely, visits to the largest brick-and-mortar sites tended to peak on Nov. 25 (Thanksgiving Day), including Walmart, Best Buy and Target, as consumers researched online before heading to stores on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving).

Interestingly, Christmas Day was popular as people downloaded music for new mp3 players and bought movie tickets online. In addition, visits to traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers also skyrocketed on Christmas Day as visitors contemplated returns and researched post-Christmas sales.

http://www.hitwise.com