ONLINE SHOPPING VISITS PEAK AGAIN ON THANKSGIVING DAY
UP 18.8% OVER 2004
Walmart.com Overtakes Amazon.com for the First Time
NEW YORK, Nov. 28, 2005— For the third year in a row, Thanksgiving Day registered as the peak day of the year for online retailers and surpassed Black Friday as the busiest day in market share of visits to online stores. According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, an index of 100 leading online retailers showed an 18.8% growth in visits on Thanksgiving Day 2005 versus Thanksgiving Day 2004, and a 20.9% increase in visits on Black Friday 2005 versus the same time last year.
"For years, retailers have used offline sales on Black Friday as a barometer for the upcoming holiday season," said Bill Tancer, general manager of research at Hitwise. "However, as we've seen in previous holiday seasons, market share of online visits to retailers can provide a more complete picture of both online shopping and online research for offline purchases. For the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, visits to retail sites were showing moderate single digit growth when compared to last year, but the recent 18.8% and 20.9% increases in market share of visits for this past Thursday and Friday are encouraging signs for both online and offline sales."
One of the sites realizing the greatest increase in visits during the holiday weekend was Walmart.com. For the first time since Hitwise began tracking U.S. Internet users in 2003, Walmart.com has surpassed Amazon.com in market share of visits. Walmart.com nearly doubled its market share of visits by 98% from Wednesday November 23, 2005 to Thanksgiving Day, registering one of the largest increases in the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category. Amazon.com registered a 20% increase during the same time frame.
When comparing top sites for Thanksgiving Day 2005 to 2004, one of the new entrants is bestbuy.dailyshopper.com which ranked number 12 in the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds Category, which includes over 10,800 retailer sites.
"The spike in visits on Thanksgiving Day for bestbuy.dailyshopper.com, a site that provides localized sales circulars for Best Buy stores, is confirmation that online research for offline sales is a significant Internet behavior on Thanksgiving Day," says Tancer. "Online and offline retailers must factor both research and online shopping activity when formulating their holiday marketing strategy."
Hitwise U.S. Data - THANKSGIVING DAY 2005
Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Web Sites (ranked by % of total Visits)
Rank By Visits for Thursday Nov. 24, 2005
Rank
Name
Domain
Market Share
1.
eBay*
www.ebay.com
16.20%
2.
Walmart.com
www.walmart.com
4.85%
3.
Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
2.80%
4.
Circuit City
www.circuitcity.com
2.72%
5.
BestBuy.com
www.bestbuy.com
2.70%
6.
Target
www.target.com
1.84%
7.
Dell USA
www.dell.com
1.65%
8.
Sears
www.sears.com
1.09%
9.
BestBuy Weekly Specials
bestbuy.dailyshopper.com
0.90%
10.
Craig's List
www.craigslist.org
0.77%
11.
JC Penney
www.jcpenney.com
0.67%
12.
BizRate.com**
www.bizrate.com
0.65%
13.
Shopping.com**
www.shopping.com
0.61%
14.
Overstock.com
www.overstock.com
0.57%
15.
KMart
www.kmart.com
0.56%
*Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites (eBay Motors, eBay Stores)
**Only includes visits to these stand-alone sites www.shopping.com and www.bizrate.com and not other Shopping.com or Shopzilla owned properties.
Weekly Holiday Shopping Tracker:
Data period: week ending Nov. 26, 2005
U.S visits to retail websites accounted for 10.9 percent of all visits to the Internet.
Top growing retail categories last week were: Computers (up 76.6%), Appliances and Electronics (up 72.3%), Video and Games (up 59.2%), Department Stores (up 45.6%) and Office Supplies (up 38.6%).
Retail (10.9 percent) was the second most popular online category after Adult (15.9%). Retail is again ahead of Email sites (8.7 percent).
Hitwise U.S. Data
Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Web Sites (ranked by % of total Visits)
Rank By Visits for Week Ending 11/26/05
Rank
Name
Domain
Market Share
% growth weekly (w/e 11/26/05 compared to w/e 11/19/05)
1.
eBay*
www.ebay.com
18.37%
-10.71%
2.
Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
3.03%
+3.20%
3.
Walmart.com
www.walmart.com
2.99%
+82.72%
4.
BestBuy.com
www.bestbuy.com
1.64%
+90.26%
5.
Target
www.target.com
1.59%
+42.67%
6.
Dell USA
www.dell.com
1.47%
+48.89%
7.
CircuitCity.com
www.circuitcity.com
1.30%
+124.24%
8.
Craig's List
www.craigslist.org
0.96%
-19.16%
9.
Sears.com
www.sears.com
0.79%
+39.18%
10.
JC Penney
www.jcpenney.com
0.74%
+5.24%
11.
Overstock.com
www.overstock.com
0.66%
+6.52%
12.
BizRate.com**
www.bizrate.com
0.65%
+9.17%
13.
Shopping.com**
www.shopping.com
0.65%
+2.39%
14.
NetFlix.com
www.netflix.com
0.57%
-18.71%
15.
Shopzilla
www.shopzilla.com
0.57%
+16.03%
*Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites ( eBay Motors, eBay Stores)
**Only includes visits to these stand-alone sites www.shopping.com and www.bizrate.com and not other Shopping.com or Shopzilla owned properties.
Contact: For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com (212) 380 2910.
About Hitwise:
Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.
By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.
Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com. For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com.
