Valentine buyers loved the Internet last year; they like it even more this year. Nielsen/NetRatings reports that gifts and flowers sites attracted 2.7 million unique visitors accessing the Internet from work last week, jumping 291% from 687,000 during the same week last year. It reports that the top site within the gifts and flowers category was Hallmark Shopping, which drew 798,000 unique visitors, up 16% from the same week last year. Gift site RedEnvelope.com spiked 87% to 498,000 unique visitors. FTD.com attracted 390,000 unique visitors, up 129% from a year earlier.
At-home traffic grew 100% compared to last year's weekly traffic. The category increased 100 percent to 2.8 million unique visitors from 1.4 million visitors during the week ending Feb. 9, 2003.
"Similar to what we saw during the holiday season, more consumers are going online to purchase gifts," says Abha Bhagat, senior Internet analyst, Nielsen/NetRatings. “Strong traffic numbers suggest online retailers can look forward to robust Valentine's Day sales."
Market researcher Hitwise, which measures market share of sites relative to all traffic on the Internet, reports that for the first 10 days of February, the market share of visits to the Flowers & Gifts category increased 26% compared to the same period in 2003.
Godiva.com led flowers, cards, gifts and chocolates in market share growth in the run-up to Valentine’s Day, Hitwise says. Godiva’s traffic increased 36.9% over the year earlier, Hitwise says. Other popular sites in the category and their increases in market share vs. a year ago are RedEnvelope.com, up 34.7%, 1-800-Flowers.com, up 21.9% and Hallmark.com, up 7.4%.
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