November e-retailing traffic grows sharply

According to PC Data, Amazon.com lived up to its name in November, doubling sales over October with more than three times as many online buyers as its nearest competitor. Amazon.com registered over 3 million buyers last month, while jcpenney.com at No. 2 had its best online showing with 894,000 buyers. Half.com placed third with 642,000 buyers. Amazon.com's 3 million buyers last month compares with 1.8 million buyers in November, 1999. Online toy retailer eToys.com registered the largest jump in monthly buyers, leaping 460% with 87,000 buyers in October to 487,000 in November. Significant buying jumps over last month were also registered by catalog apparel retailer jcrew.com (379%), reseller half.com (374%), and electronics retailer bestbuy.com (282 percent). Also noteworthy, walmart.com entered the rankings at No. 12 with 313,000 buyers. "Online shopping took off in November with amazon.com far and away the big winner," said PC Data Internet analyst Cameron Meierhoefer. "Traditional offline retailers like JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy and Wal-Mart are demonstrating impressive gains on the Internet this Holiday season, but amazon.com continues to raise the bar."

Meierhoefer noted that amazon.com's recent partnership with toysrus.com, in which amazon.com hosts the toysrus.com web site, has benefited both parties. The toysrus.com portion of amazon.com received 8.6 million visitors during November (roughly a third of all amazon.com visitors), well ahead of chief online toy rival eToys.com's 5.6 million November visitors.

The data for the Top 20 Online Retailers is gathered through a proprietary software tool that tracks unique visitors and unique buyers on each web site. Each visitor or buyer is counted once, regardless of how many times the individual visits a site or buys from a site. The sample includes over 120,000 home Internet users. Total home Internet users are estimated at approximately 90 million.