For the second consecutive month, Amazon.com beat eBay in terms of unique website visitors, according to data from Nielsen Online. And while Amazon's page views were up slightly from a year ago, eBay's page views were down in December 2008 compared to December 2007. eBay traffic tends to peak earlier in the holiday shopping season than Amazon.com's, perhaps due in part to consumers' perceptions of shipping delivery times.
Amazon.com experienced a 2.45% increase in the number of unique visitors to its website in the month of December 2008 compared to December 2007. The number of page views increased 1.83% year-over-year in December.
eBay experienced a 3.27% drop in the number of unique visitors to its website in the month of December 2008 compared to December 2007. The number of page views on eBay decreased 30% year-over-year for December 2008.
Traffic trends were reflected in sales: eBay Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) for eBay's marketplaces business excluding vehicles was down 12% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same quarter a year ago (link to story), while Amazon grew fourth quarter 2008 net sales by 18% year over year (link to story).
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