The official beginning of the 2007 holiday shopping season resulted in retail sites dominating the top gaining site and category rankings, according to the comScore Media Metrix analysis of US consumer activity at top online retailers.
With November traditionally marking the start of the holiday shopping season, online retailers, comparison shopping engines, and discount web sites all experienced a sudden flood of visitors. This, according to Jack Flanagan, executive vice president for comScore Media Metrix, may be due to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and higher fuel prices driving consumers away from bricks-and-mortar stores and toward well-researched online bargain hunting.
Toys come before coupons
Despite recent toy safety concerns, the toy category surged by 32% to 31.1 million online retail visitors in November 2007, making it the top-gaining category for the month. Toys'R'Us web sites led the category with 16.2 million visitors (87%), followed by KB Toys with 4 million visitors (up 119%) and Barbie with 3.6 million visitors (up 8%).
But with many consumers looking for holiday season bargains, the coupons category also climbed by 27% to 25.8 million visitors. Sites offering Black Friday promotions proved particularly popular, with both BlackFriday.info and BFads.net jumping by more than 1,000% to 3.3 million visitors and 5 million visitors respectively. Cyber Monday promotions were also popular, with CyberMonday.com rising by nearly 3,000% to 809,000 visitors.
Department store leaders
As multi-channel retailers continue to develop their online strategies, increasing numbers of consumers are frequenting department store web sites. Target led the category with nearly 42 million visitors (up 35%), followed by Walmart.com with nearly 40 million visitors (up 54%), and JCPenney web sites with 18 million visitors (up 37%).
Traffic increases were also seen by Sears.com (up 66% to 15.4 million visitors), Kohl's (up 58% to 12 million) and Kmart.com (up 83% to 9.3 million).
Top online properties
In terms of the top online properties, November 2007 saw Yahoo! web sites remain in the top position with 136 million visitors, while Microsoft web sites crept past Time Warner to capture the third place with 119.2 million visitors. Wal-Mart moved up seven spots to number 13 with 42.5 million visitors, while Target took the 14th spot with nearly 42 million visitors.
At the same time, Circuit City and JCPenney took positions 43 and 45 respectively after receiving a boost from online holiday shopping traffic. The Superpages.com network jumped 16 spots to 24th place in the ranking.
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