E-greeting sites buck the Fourth of July trend to lower traffic

The Fourth of July is becoming a greeting card holiday--at least online, says the weekly web audience measurement report from comScore Media Metrix. The research company--formerly Jupiter Media Metrix--reports that daily visits to four top e-greetings sites last week increased 35% over average daily visits. The four sites hosted an average of 1.57 million visitors a day vs. the daily average of 1.16 million a day for the three weeks preceding the Fourth.

ComScore Media Metrix reported the following traffic:
--Blue Mountain Arts hosted 350,000 average daily visitors, an increase of 58%
--Egreetings, 157,000, up 35%
--American Greeting Property, 847,000, up 31%
--Top-Greetings.com, 221,000, up 23%.

U.S. users accessing the web dipped 5% during the Fourth of July weekend to 89.5 million. Four times as many sites experienced a drop off in use as an increase during the week.

Several retail sites bucked the trend toward lower traffic, comScore Media Metrix says. Traffic at CircuitCity.com increased 23% to 158,000 average daily visitors; traffic at CompUSA.com increased 18% to 96,000 and traffic to JCPenney.com grew 37% to 205,000.