Holiday Shopper Traffic Rose 30 Percent

It may be tough to make money doing e-commerce at retail in these troubled
times, but it’s not for lack of traffic. In fact, an estimated 34 million
unique visitors on average went to retail sites each week during the 2000
holiday shopping season, according to newly released figures.

Web measurement firm Media Metrix said those figures were up 30.3 percent
compared to the 1999 holiday-shopping season and surpassed the Web’s overall
growth of 18.6 percent during the same period.

Amazon.com remained the No. 1 retail site over the five-week holiday season
for the second year in a row, with a year-over-year increase in
holiday-season traffic of 47.8 percent, the company said. But brick and
mortar retailers venturing online were the stars of the season.

“While retail sites drew an unprecedented number of online shoppers this
holiday season and even had an aggregate growth rate surpassing that of the
overall Web, this year will be better remembered by the strong performance of
many traditional off-line brands like Walmart, Bestbuy, American Greetings
and Staples,” said Anne Rickert, measurement analyst at Media Metrix. “At the
same time, this season was marked by the continued dominance of a few
existing e-tailers, mainly Amazon.”

Traffic to retail sites for the week following the holiday-shopping season
(the week ending Dec. 31, 2000) was down 15.2 percent compared to the holiday
season average, but the Media Metrix Online Shopping Index – which aggregates
Web visitors from both home and work to nearly 400 retail sites and 18 retail
subcategories — was still up 27 percent compared to the same week last year.

Walmart.com was the top gaining retail site for the holiday shopping season,
with a year-over-year visitor increase of 640 percent compared to the 1999
holiday season. The five-week traffic average to Walmart.com grew from 50,000
average daily unique visitors over the 1999 holiday shopping season to
370,000 over the 2000 holiday shopping season.

Amazon.com, however, was attracting more than 1.5 million visitors a day
during the same period, Media Metrix said.

Six of the top 10 gaining retail sites for the 2000 holiday shopping season
were traditional off-line brands — Walmart.com, Bestbuy.com,
AmericanGreetings.com, Staples.com, Hallmark.com and Sears.com. Books sites
were the top retail subcategory.