Holiday E-Commerce Shows Modest Increases

Wayne N. Kawamoto
Managing Editor, www.smallbusinesscomputing.com

Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI), a firm the specializes in new technology and internet analysis and measurement, released the final installment of its weekly Holiday 2001 E-Commerce Series. According to the firm, on average, 51.3 million unique visitors went to shopping sites each week during the 2001 holiday-shopping season (week ending Nov. 25 through week ending Dec. 23), up 50 percent compared to the 2000 holiday-shopping season and up 95 percent verus 1999.

“With the holiday-buying season behind us, we’re left with one inescapable truth: the Internet has become an integral part of holiday shopping,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice president, media research, Jupiter Media Metrix. “Unlike 2000, when online shopping started strong but then fell off, online shopping this year started strong and ended even stronger.”

“We’ve been waiting for the inevitable dominance of the traditional retailers over their pureplay counterparts, and it appears that 2001 may have been the year when it finally happened,” said Ken Cassar, senior Jupiter Research analyst. “With a few exceptions such as Amazon, the dominant retailers that sell merchandise directly from their sites tend to be affiliated with brick-and-mortar stores and catalogs. In fact, traffic to the seven traditional retailers among the top 15 shopping sites for the entire 2001 shopping season increased 73 percent verus last year.”

The top three traditional retailers according to their average daily unique visitors each week over the 2001 holiday-shopping season were were: Columbia House Sites with 598,000 average daily unique visitors; Toysrus with 515,000; and Barnesandnoble.com with 447,000.

Traffic to all shopping sites for the week following the holiday-shopping season (week ending Dec. 30, 2001) was down nine percent compared to the season average, but the Jupiter Media Metrix Online Shopping Index – which aggregates Web visitors from both home and work to nearly 500 retail sites and 19 subcategories – was still up 61 percent compared to the same week last year.

Small Business Computing Staff
Small Business Computing Staff
Small Business Computing addresses the technology needs of small businesses, which are defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees and/or less than $7 million in annual sales.

Must Read

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends, and analysis.