Traffic to retail sites on the day after Thanksgiving was up 68 percent to 16.1 million unique visitors compared to last year, according to a report Jupiter Media Metrix released yesterday.
Visitors to retail sites on Saturday were up 59 percent to 15.3 million, and visitors on Sunday were up 55 percent to 16.1 million, according to the New York firm.
The peak shopping days this year were Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when there were 21.2 million, 20.2 million and 18.9 million visitors, respectively, Jupiter claimed.
Thanksgiving day had the least amount of shopping activity with 13.7 million visitors.
To arrive at its figures, Jupiter monitors the Web surfing behavior of 60,000 Web users in the U.S. and extrapolates.
In other Jupiter findings:
The top three shopping sites, ranked according to the number of average daily unique visitors, were:
· Ebay.com up 57 percent versus last year to 4 million average daily unique visitors;
· Amazon.com, up 49 percent to 2.3 million visitors;
· Mypoints.com, up 31 percent to 1.8 million visitors.
The top three gaining sites, ranked according to their percent gain in traffic versus last year, were:
· Ticketmaster, up 424 percent to 713,000 average daily unique visitors;
· Ebates.com, up 400 percent to 120,000 average daily unique visitors;
· Drugstore.com, up 319 percent to 373,000 average daily unique visitors.
The top sites according to their increase in total average daily visitors versus last year were:
· Ebay.com, which grew by 1.5 million average daily visitors to 4 million;
· Amazon.com, which grew by 741,000 average daily visitors to 2.3 million;
· Ticketmaster, which grew by 577,000 average daily visitors to 713,000.
This year's top three categories, ranked according to the number of average daily unique visitors, are:
· Auctions with 4.3 million;
· Books with 3.1 million;
· Computers with 3.1 million.
Also according to Jupiter, the top three categories according to their percent increase in average daily unique visitors are:
· Games, up 414 percent to 216,000 average daily unique visitors;
· Healthcare, up 321 percent to 787,000 average daily visitors;
· Furniture, up 240 percent to 136,000 average daily visitors.
The categories with the highest growth in total average daily visitors versus last year were:
· Auctions, which grew by 1.3 million to 4.3 million;
· Computers, which grew by 1.1 million to 3.1 million;
· Books, which grew by 1 million to 3.1 million.
The major brick-and-mortar sites outpaced the so-called Internet pureplays in terms of percent traffic growth versus last year.
Walmart.com, Target.com and BarnesandNoble.com all grew by at least 40 percent in average daily unique visitors versus last year.
While Amazon.com grew 49 percent to 2.3 million average daily unique visitors, other major Internet pureplays like Cdnow.com, 800.com, Buy.com and Overstock.com grew by 15 percent or less.
The major catalogers rarely exceed 100,000 average daily unique visitors, according to Jupiter. Eddiebauer.com had 111,000 average daily unique visitors, Landsend.com had 84,000 and Llbean.com had 70,000. Chadwicks.com and Jcrew.com had no reportable traffic.
Jupiter analysts predict that 2001 holiday online retail and travel sales will reach approximately $11.9 billion-an 11 percent increase over last year's $10.8 billion. Although growth this season will be slower than last, Jupiter analysts expect to see more people shopping online and consumers allocating a greater percentage of their holiday budget to online shopping.
