With the price of gas still sky high in most parts of the country, it appears that many buyers have foregone the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales in malls for the online equivalent. The Nielsen/Netratings Holiday eShopping Index monitors traffic to 100 sites throughout the year. According to their report, the site with the highest online traffic on "Cyber Monday" (11/28/05), traditionally the beginning of the online shopping season, was eBay with over 11.7 million unique visitors. This was double the number of visitors to the number two site, Amazon.com (5.6 million). Overstock.com, Shopping.com and Shopzilla.com also made the top ten with totals from 1.3 million to 1.9 million.
Arguments have been made that this increase of traffic is predominantly buyers doing research, and according to Hitwise, "almost 50 percent of visits to shopping sites originate from other shopping sites (which) demonstrates that consumers continue to manually search and compare across several online retailers. Google led search engine referrals by providing 10.8 percent of visits to online retailers."
It should also be noted that the eBay traffic includes all visitors to the site, both buyers and sellers. However, other reports do show a significant increase in online spending over 2004.
In the 12/4/05 Online Holiday Shopping Update, comScore Networks stated that 2005 holiday spending (Nov 1- Dec 2) has risen 24% from $.7.84 billion in 2004 to $9.75 billion in 2005. In the same report, they identify that online non-travel spending on November 28, 2005 alone rose 26% from 2004 (to $485 million). This is the highest day so far in 2005, but the trend is continuing with 12/1/05 posting online sales totaling $484.7 million.
The Visa USA SpendTrak Report corroborates these findings by announcing a 26% jump in online visa transactions on Cyber Monday alone (up to $505 million), but the peak of week ending 12/4/05 was on 12/1/05 at $575 million which was a 41% increase over 2004. The total online Visa transactions between 11/28/05 and 12/4/05 exceeded $3.2 billion.
The good news for sellers is that, according to comScore Networks, the peak online sales for 2004 were in mid-December, and they anticipate a 24% increase in holiday sales for 2005. Cyber Monday was not even in the top 10 highest online shopping days of 2004, which is very good news for online sellers and bodes well for the remaining Christmas season.
Hitwise
U.S. Data
Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Web Sites (ranked by % of total Visits)
Rank By Visits for Week Ending12/03/05 |
| Rank |
Name |
Domain |
Market Share |
% growth weekly (w/e 12/03/05 compared
to w/e 11/26/05) |
| 1. |
eBay |
www.ebay.com |
19.42% |
5.70% |
| 2. |
Amazon.com |
www.amazon.com |
3.31% |
9.34% |
| 3. |
Walmart.com |
www.walmart.com |
2.02% |
-32.56% |
| 4. |
Target |
www.target.com |
1.38% |
-13.57% |
| 5. |
Dell USA |
www.dell.com |
1.28% |
-13.01% |
| 6. |
BestBuy.com |
www.bestbuy.com |
1.09% |
-33.91% |
| 7. |
Craig's List |
www.craigslist.org |
1.05% |
9.26% |
| 8. |
JC Penney |
www.jcpenney.com |
0.86% |
16.81% |
| 9. |
CircuitCity.com |
www.circuitcity.com |
0.82% |
-36.77% |
| 10. |
Overstock.com |
www.overstock.com |
0.72% |
10.07% |
| 11. |
Sears.com |
www.sears.com |
0.71% |
-9.80% |
| 12. |
Shopping.com |
www.shopping.com |
0.69% |
5.94% |
| 13. |
BizRate.com |
www.bizrate.com |
0.67% |
2.11% |
| 14. |
Shopzilla |
www.shopzilla.com |
0.62% |
14.02% |
| 15. |
NetFlix.com |
www.netflix.com |
0.61% |
6.82% |
Links to More Information:
http://www.comscore.com/press/pr.asp
http://www.netratings.com/news.jsp
http://usa.visa.com/download/about_visa/newsroom/statistics/SpendTrakReport_11.28-12.04.pdf
About the author:
Lissa McGrath is a freelance author and can be contacted through her website at http://www.lissamcgrath.com.
