Traffic spikes at gift and card sites the week before Valentine’s Day

Shoppers hit the web big-time for Valentine’s Day gifts and sites with the right goodies saw traffic jump in the week before the holiday, according to figures from Nielsen/NetRatings. Lingerie site Fredericks.com saw traffic skyrocket 115% to 562,000 unique visitors in the week ending February 10, compared to 261,000 the previous week. VictoriasSecret.com drew 376,000 visitors, a 22% gain from a week earlier.

“Similar to the offline retail season, February 14th is the first major event after the holidays in which online merchants can heavily advertise sales and promote seasonal items,” says Betty Yeh, Internet analyst with NetRatings. “Events such as Valentine`s Day allow e-commerce web sites to attract shoppers with special promotions while providing the convenience and flexibility of purchasing online.”

Activity at leading e-card sites soared the week before Valentine’s Day. Traffic from office desktops to AmericanGreetings.com surged 92% from 338,000 the prior week to 746,000 the week ending February 10, while it jumped 57% to 519,000 at eGreetings.com , according to Nielsen/ NetRatings.

But the pre-Valentine`s Day surge at those sites bucked what has been a recent downward trend at American Greeting’s e-card network, which also includes BlueMountain.com besides the two other sites, as reported by Jupiter Media Metrix. The leading provider of e-cards, the American Greetings network saw visitors to its sites collectively decline 10% from November through December of last year, down to 22.9 million from 25.5 million, Jupiter says.

Analysts tie the decline to a new policy under which American Greetings charges for sending cards, a service that used to be free. In December, the company instituted a new policy of charging customers $11.95 per year to access and send most of the network’s cards.

Within the American Greetings network, Bluemountain.com, the largest site, saw traffic decline 22% from November through December, from 15.9 million visitors to 12.4 million. However, the loss in traffic was somewhat offset by increased traffic to AmericanGreetings.com, which grew 2% to 11.1 million visitors, and to eGreetings.com, which grew 74% to 5.5 million visitors during that period.

E-card sites that are still free, meanwhile, also saw increased traffic from November through December. Traffic to Yahoo Greetings, the second largest provider of e-cards after the American Greetings network, rose 70% from November to December, from 5.4 million visitors to 9.1 million, while number three Hallmark.com increased 74 % from 4.7 million to 8.2 million during the same time frame.