84.6 million U.S. consumers plan to shop online today, up 17.5% from 72.0 million last year, according to a poll this weekend by BIGresearch for online retailer trade group Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation. Based on the Thanksgiving weekend’s results, many will be searching for bargains.
Consumers spent $534 million at retail sites Friday, up 1% from the day after Thanksgiving last year, and $288 million on Thanksgiving Day, up 6% from a year ago, for a 2% increase for the two days combined, according to web measurement firm comScore Inc. Sales online and off were slightly better than expected, says comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, who says consumers apparently responded to aggressive promotions by retailers.
In stores and online, shoppers spent an average of $372.57 this weekend, up 7.2% from $347.55 over the 2007 Thanksgiving Weekend, reports the National Retail Federation. Total spending amounted to $41.0 billion. “Pent-up demand on electronics and clothing, plus unparalleled bargains on this season’s hottest items helped drive shopping all weekend,” says NRF president and CEO Tracy Mullin who cautioned that holiday sales are not expected to maintain the weekend’s frantic pace. NRF is projecting 2.2% growth in holiday sales this year. 34% of consumers who shopped this weekend did some shopping online, according to a survey of 3,370 consumers this weekend by BIGresearch for the NRF.
There was conflicting data about traffic and sales at e-commerce sites from other sources.
Web measurement firm Nielsen Online says traffic to 120 representative online retail sites increased 10% to 31.7 million unique visitors Friday, from 28.8 million the year before. Consumer electronics grew at the fastest rate when comparing the Friday after Thanksgiving to the previous Friday, Nov. 21, registering a 219% increase in traffic. Next came comparison shopping engines and portals, growing 83% week over week. Strong growth in that category “indicates that consumers continue to see the web as the source for determining the best deals and prices of the season, which we expect to be top of mind for holiday shoppers this year,” says Ken Cassar, vice president, industry insights, at Nielsen Online.
However, Hitwise, an Experian subsidiary that also tracks web traffic, says traffic to the top 500 retail web sites as a percentage of all U.S. web visits was down 11% on Thanksgiving Day compared to last year, 5% on Friday and 8% on Saturday. The only retail category to show traffic growth, Hitwise says, was online-only retailers. That category was up 11% on Thanksgiving Day and 10% Friday, then down 2% Saturday. The most-visited retail site on Thursday was Walmart.com, receiving 13.72% of visits to the 500 retail sites, followed by Amazon.com at 9.56% and BestBuy.com at 6.05%. On Friday, Amazon.com took the top spot at 11.06% of visits, followed by Walmart.com at 9.88% and Target.com at 4.62%.
Web analytics vendor Coremetrics says data from more than 300 U.S. online retailers show a decline in e-commerce activity Friday compared to the Friday after Thanksgiving last year. Page views were down 8.55% and product views down 8.29%, while average session length declined 18%, Coremetrics says. Average order value declined 6.15% to $126.04 this year from $134.29 a year ago, suggesting consumers were looking for bargains, Coremetrics says.
But the Coremetrics data suggest department store e-commerce sites were big winners Friday, registering a 12% increase in sessions ending in orders and a 30% increase in items per order. Gift sites registered a 5% increase in sessions in which consumers placed items in shopping carts and a 57.38% increase in sessions ending in orders. “In both of these sub-verticals consumers spent less time using onsite search engines—down 4.31% for department stores and 2.13% for gift stores compared to last year—suggesting that early and aggressive promotions offered by retailers are working,” says John Squire, chief strategy officer at Coremetrics.
The comScore data show online consumers did not bother to get up early to shop on Friday. The busiest shopping period was from noon to 4 p.m., when consumers made 24.2% of their purchases, followed by 8 a.m. to noon, which accounted for another 23.1%. Only 5.5% of purchases were made between midnight and 4 a.m., and 10.9% from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. Consumers spent 17.2% of their dollars from 4 to 8 p.m. and 19.1% between 8 p.m. and midnight, comScore says.
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