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Thanksgiving looms in the US and pre-Christmas activity of course started in about August in other parts of the world - but the holiday shopping season is just moving into high gear. Two initial releases from Hitwise and one from Nielsen//NetRatings this week show that the online segment is breaking records once again.
Hitwise will be providing daily and weekly reporting of figures covering nearly 10,000 retail sites. Initial results show that shopping and classifieds web sites claimed 9.27% of all United States online visits on Nov. 20, 2004, easily breaking the 2003 daily high of 8.96% (Nov. 27, 2003). The weekly record was also broken with shopping sites claiming 8.37 and 8.02% of all Internet visits for the weeks ending Nov. 20th and 13th, respectively. In 2003 the high was 7.84% in the week ending Dec. 13th.
'Online shopping appears to be occurring earlier and in greater force than last year' according to Vice President of Research Bill Tancer. 'If last year is any indication, we're likely to see weekly shopping levels increase with a peak roughly a week before Christmas'. In particular, the 13 leading comparison-shopping sites increased 22% for the week ending Nov. 20, 2004 versus the same week a year ago - their increased use representing, in Tancer's words, 'a new era in online shopping... Users are becoming more sophisticated in their online purchase behaviors, clearly demonstrating the willingness to use comparison shopping sites to find the best product at the best price'.
| Top Retail Subcategories by market share of U.S. Visits to Total Shopping Category |
||||
| Period - Week Ending 11/20/04 | ||||
| Leading Retail categories | Market share of Visits to Shopping & Classifieds category |
% growth since previous week
|
% growth year-on-year |
|
| 1. | Auctions | 38.01% | + 0.26% | + 11.37% |
| 2. | Department Stores | 11.84% | + 4.23% | - 7.64% |
| 3. | Rewards and Directories | 9.29% | - 1.90% | - 20.46% |
| 4. | Computers | 6.09% | + 4.82% | - 2.72% |
| 5. | Apparel and Accessories | 5.77% | - 0.52% | - 13.10% |
| 6. | Books | 5.53% | + 0.18% | - 28.37% |
| 7. | Appliances & Electronics | 5.04% | + 4.13% | - 0.59% |
| 8. | House and Garden | 4.93% | - 2.57% | + 7.88% |
| 9. | Video and Games | 4.79% | + 2.13% | - 15.37% |
| 10. | Automotive | 3.79% | - 3.32% | + 21.86% |
| 11. | Toys and Hobbies | 2.84% | 0.00% | - 8.09% |
| 12. | Sport and Fitness | 2.75% | - 1.43% | - 1.43% |
| 13. | Classifieds | 2.63% | - 2.95% | + 130.70% |
| 14. | Music | 2.56% | + 0.79% | - 28.49% |
| 15. | Health and Beauty | 1.40% | - 15.15% | - 11.95% |
| 16. | Flowers & Gifts | 1.23% | + 10.81% | - 6.11% |
| 17. | Office Supplies | 0.83% | 0.00% | + 10.67% |
| 18. | Grocery and Alcohol | 0.65% | + 3.17% | + 10.17% |
| 19. | Wholesale and Relationship Sales | 0.40% | - 28.57% | - 16.67% |
The most visited comparison-shopping sites last week were Yahoo! Shopping, www.bizrate.com and www.shopping.com. The demographics of visitors to comparison-shopping sites are generally in line with those of all Internet users.
| Chart: Top 15 Shopping Sites Ranked By % of Total Visits Hitwise U.S. Data | |||||
| Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Web Sites Rank By Visits for Week Ending 11/20/04 | |||||
| Rank | Name | Domain | Market Share |
% growth weekly (w/e 11/20 compared to w/e 11/13) |
% growth yearly (w/e 11/22/03 compared to w/e 11/13/04) |
| 1. | eBay* | www.ebay.com | 22.88% | + 0.62% | - 19.63% |
| 2. | Amazon.com | www.amazon.com | 3.52% | + 0.28% | - 24.79% |
| 3. | Dell USA | www.dell.com | 1.93% | + 14.88% | + 44.03% |
| 4. | Walmart.com | www.walmart.com | 1.73% | + 8.12% | + 19.31% |
| 5. | Target | www.target.com | 1.28% | + 4.07% | + 28.00% |
| 6. | Yahoo! Shopping | shopping.yahoo.com | 1.24% | + 4.20% | - 29.94% |
| 7. | BestBuy.com | www.bestbuy.com | 1.01% | + 7.45% | - 14.41% |
| 8. | BizRate.com | www.bizrate.com | 0.76% | 0.00% | + 65.22% |
| 9. | Sears | www.sears.com | 0.74% | + 7.25% | + 5.71% |
| 10. | JC Penney | www.jcpenney.com | 0.68% | + 6.25% | + 4.62% |
| 11. | Overstock.com | www.overstock.com | 0.67% | + 3.08% | + 48.89% |
| 12. | Shopping.com | www.shopping.com | 0.66% | + 6.45% | + 175.00% |
| 13. | QVC.com | www.qvc.com | 0.59% | + 1.72% | + 3.51% |
| 14. | Circuit City | www.circuitcity.com | 0.59% | + 13.46% | - 6.35% |
| 15. | Ticketmaster | www.ticketmaster.com | 0.49% | - 9.26% | N/A |
| *Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites | |||||
The fastest growing retail categories last week were: Flowers & Gifts; Computers; Department Stores; Appliances & Electronics and Grocery & Alcohol. Retail was the third most popular online category after Adult (18.1%) and Search Engines and Directories (14.0%). Interestingly of the leading product-related search terms driving traffic to retail Web sites, 'engagement rings' increased the most - climbing from number 29 to number seven!
Hitwise further reports that the market share of visits to shopping web sites in the United Kingdom has broken through the 12% market share barrier for the first time - for the week ending November 20th, the online shopping sector represented 12.13% of all visits by UK Internet users, despite offline retailers experiencing slower rates of growth this festive season than they have during the pre-Christmas period in the past two years. Monthly data from October 2004 shows that traffic to shopping web sites has increased by 24% in the 12 months since October 2003.
Of the top 1,000 most successful UK shopping search terms, 63.7% were brand specific (e.g 'ebay'), 27.5% were generic product searches (e.g 'mobile phones') and 8.8% were specific product searches (e.g 'nokia 6260'). 'Ebay' is the most popular shopping-related keyword typed into search engines, with 10 different variations of 'ebay' appearing within the top 100 shopping search terms. 'Amazon' and 'argos' are the second and third most popular keywords respectively.
Hitwise monitors the interaction of 25 million Internet users with over 500,000 web sites across 160 industry categories each day, and is online at www.hitwise.com .
Meanwhile, Nielsen//NetRatings has launched its sixth annual Holiday eShopping Index, showing that the week ending November 14 saw a 60% increase in online shopping visits versus the previous week, led by sites in the home and garden, books/music/video, and toys/video games categories.
Online shopping growth does not, of course, correlate directly to problems for offline retailing - quite the opposite in some cases. As well as cutting out trips to the store, some online shoppers are researching for such trips, points out Heather Dougherty, Senior Retail Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings. 'Shopping /comparison portals such as Froogle and NexTag ... should have a noticeable impact offline, as the 2004 holiday shopper becomes a more informed buyer' says Dougherty.
'Black Friday', the day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year in the US. The weekly Nielsen//NetRatings Holiday eShopping Index is based on total shopping trips at work and at
home, measuring the amount of Web surfing activity at online retail sites during the course of the holiday
season - it uses c.10 representative sites in each of the 10 categories. Nielsen//NetRatings covers 70% of the world's Internet usage and is online at www.nielsen-netratings.com
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
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