Online retailers experience double-digit increases in Black Friday sales
The online holiday shopping season got off to a strong start on Black Friday, according to industry reports.
Traffic to online shopping sites grew 29% to 17.2 million on the Friday after Thanksgiving from 13.3 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The fastest growing categories were toys/video games, consumer electronics and computer hardware/software.
EBay was the top online retailer on Friday, with 9.5 million visitors, followed by Amazon.com (4.6 million), Wal-Mart (3.4 million), Target (2.9 million) and BestBuy.com (2.1 million), Nielsen/NetRatings said.
ComScore Networks Inc. also reported a double-digit increase in Black Friday spending, with non-travel online spending increasing 22% to $305 million from $250 million in 2004. Sales were strongest during the Thanksgiving week on Tuesday (Nov. 22), when online retail spending reached nearly $441 million, a 55% year-over-year increase, comScore said.
Online spending on Thanksgiving Day totaled $144 million, up 12% from $128 million from Thanksgiving Day 2005, comScore reports. Total spending for the November/December holiday season is expected to exceed $19 billion.
ComScore also reported 24% year-over-year growth from Nov. 1 to 25, amounting to $6.96 billion this year vs. $5.6 billion a year ago.
Pricegrabber.com experienced a 77% year-over-year increase on Friday, generating customer referrals to merchants that led to more than $192 million in sales. The average order size was $420.
The top selling categories on Friday were digital cameras, gaming consoles, apparel, MP3 players, plasma TVs, laptops, electronic toys, fragrances, jewelry and watches and home appliances, PriceGrabber reported.
E-commerce spending on Visa branded payment cards in the U.S. rose 32.1% year-over-year to $544 million on Friday and Saturday, according to Visa U.S.A.’s Holiday SpendTrak report. Visa processed 7.7 million e-commerce transactions over the two-day period, up 26.8% from the same period in 2004. The average ticket was $69.97.
Online purchases accounted for about 8% of the $7.1 billion in spending on Visa cards for the two-day period and about 6% of total transactions of 122.9 million. The average ticket for all spending on Visa cards was $57.49.
In the offline world, researchers reported conflicting estimates of sales and growth.
ShopperTrak RCT Corp.`s National Retail Sales Estimate today reported that sales in the first two shopping days this year was slightly below last year, totaling $13.4 billion versus $13.8 billion in 2004. It speculates that aggressive discounting kept dollar figures flat. In addition, ShopperTrak pointed out that with Christmas falling on a Sunday this year, there is an extra Saturday for shopping, which may have delayed some consumers’ shopping.
"The flat performance we saw this weekend is not necessarily indicative of the holiday season as a whole, as traditionally Thanksgiving weekend is not a bellwether of consumer spending throughout the entire season," said Michael Niemira, chief economist and director of research for the International Council of Shopping Centers. "Although some discounting may have slowed the early pace of sales, the industry can expect to see much healthier sales patterns as we move into December and closer to both Christmas and the annually strong Saturday before Christmas retail boom."
ShopperTrak estimates notwithstanding, the National Retail Federation reports that a survey that BIGResearch conducted for the association shows that spending was up 21.9%, growth that the NRF describes as “incredible,” reaching $27.8 billion for the weekend vs. $22.8 billion for the same weekend a year ago.
Online retailers were up to the challenge of meeting consumers’ shopping demands, says web site performance monitoring and management company Keynote Systems Inc. “Major online retailer sites continued to deliver better than expected performance and reliability through the busiest portions of the biggest shopping weekend of the year,” Keynote reported. “Major sites for Costco, Office Depot, Amazon, JC Penney and Wal-Mart all delivered close to normal times for completing a typical shopping transaction. Although the overall reliability dipped to as low as 96% for the Keynote Transaction Performance Index as a whole, there were very few dips below 95% for any particular site during the period from Thursday, November 25 at 8 am EST to Sunday, November 27 at 2 pm EST.”
Back...
