Report: Web Traffic Rises With Consumer Confidence
U.S. user traffic to online retailers climbed in April, mirroring the recent rise in the Consumer Confidence Index, according to Hitwise, an online tracking and intelligence service.Hitwise said traffic to online retailers sunk to its low for the year the weekend of March 22, when Arab TV station Al Jazeera aired footage of American bodies and prisoners in the war with Iraq. Since then, as U.S. fortunes in the war rose, so did traffic to retailer sites, from 4.8 percent of U.S. user visits to all sites, to 5.1 percent.
"U.S. online consumers appear to be in sync with U.S. consumers on the whole," said Chris Maher, general manager, Hitwise, North America. "Once the worst of the war was over, their interest in spending improved."
Since the weekend of March 22, the retail sectors with the largest increases in relative share of visits as a proportion of all U.S. traffic are computers (33 percent), appliances and electronics (32 percent), video and games (24 percent), house and garden (23 percent) and wholesale and relationship sales (23 percent).
