February bragging rights for most unique visitors to an e-commerce site again
went to Amazon.com, but Kmart’s Bluelight.com entry finally edged ahead of
Walmart.com, according to figures from Web measurement firm
Jupiter Media Metrix .
The report also shows that the total number of minutes spent online in the
United States increased 51 percent, from 64.8 billion minutes in February
2000 to 97.7 billion last month. Home usage increased the most.
Perhaps not surprising, given the threat of its closure, Napster Digital,
which includes use of the service’s Web sites and controversial music
file-swapping applications, became the 13th most visited property in February
with 16.9 million unique visitors.
The American Greetings site jumped from 7.3 million unique visitors in
January to 9.0 million in February, causing it to rise from 42 to 24 in the
rankings. Bluemountainarts.com, part of the Excite Network, also increased
significantly, from 12.3 million unique visitors in January 2001 to 16.3
million in February.
In overall terms, the top three on the most-visited list were the AOL Time
Warner Network at 69.37 million unique visitors; the Microsoft family of
sites at 59.85 million and Yahoo! at 57.52 million.
In the e-commerce wars, Amazon.com came in at 18.05 million unique users,
followed by eBay at 16.95 million. BizRate.com had 6.37 million and Barnes &
Noble had 6.19 million.
In the clicks and mortar arena, Sears.com led the pack at 2.67 million unique
visitors. Bluelight.com with 2.58 million unique visitors crept ahead of
Walmart.com with
2.34 million. Walmart.com had led all clicks and mortar retail shopping sites
in unique visitor traffic since its relaunch in October of 2000.
JCPenney.com scored 2.28 million unique visitors while Target.com had 1.78
million and Costco.com had 879,000.
The overall figures clearly show that the Internet increasingly is becoming
an essential part of daily life for millions of Americans.
“While Jupiter Media Metrix expects the number of people online in the U.S.
to increase 13 percent to 138 million in 2001, usage-intensity will increase
at a faster rate,” said David Card, Jupiter senior analyst.
“Time spent
online will continue to be driven by people’s increasing familiarity with the
Internet, the availability of more relevant content, and the adoption of
Internet applications such as instant messengers, media players,
file-swapping programs, and games among other services.”