Tag Archives: walmart

Online Retail Sites See Holiday Surge

Online retail websites experienced significant growth in November as the holiday season officially kicked off, according to a new report from comScore. Among the top gaining retail sub-categories were toys, consumer electronics, and department stores, each growing more than 30 percent compared to October. Toys sites attracted 27.4 million Americans during the month, representing a 33-percent increase from the previous month. Toysrus led the category with more than 14.8 million visitors (up 82%), ranking as the fourth top-gaining property in November. The LEGO Group landed in the second spot in the toys category wit 3.8 million visitors (up12%), followed by Disney Shopping with 2.6 million (up29%) and AmericanGirl.com with 1.9 million (up 44%). "November marks the official start of the holiday shopping season as millions of Americans search for gifts and deals both online and in stores," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. "With nearly 4 out of 5 Americans online visiting a retail site during November, the Internet clearly represents an increasingly important channel for retailers during the holiday season and beyond." Consumer electronics sites grew to 52.8 million visitors during the month, a 32 percent increase over October, led by Best Buy with nearly 25 million visitors and Walmart Electronics with 9.9 million visitors (up 139%). Radio Shack ranked third with 5.1 million visitors, followed closely by eBay Electronics with 4.8 million visitors (up 12 %) and Buy.com with 4.4 million visitors (up 11%). Online department stores saw a 33 percent gain, reaching nearly 81 million unique visitors in November. Walmart led the category with 46.2 million visitors (up 62%), followed by Target with 38.8 million (up 43%), Sears with more than 19 million (up 36%), JCPenney with 15.4 million (up 34%), and Macy's with 12.7 million (up 38%). Online shoppers flocked to coupon sites, making it the #3 gaining category in November, growing 33 percent to 37.5 million visitors. Coupons, Inc. landed in the top spot with more than 8 million visitors (up 9%), followed by EverSave.com with 5.3 million visitors and RetailMeNot with 5.1 million (up43%). BlackFriday.Info experienced a huge surge in activity, increasing more than 1,000 percent to 5 million visitors. GottaDeal.com saw traffic increase 955 percent to 1.8 million. The month of November saw online spending increase 10 percent versus a year ago to reach nearly $12.3 billion in sales. comScore noted that the comparison is against a very weak November 2008, due to the economic crisis. Black Friday hit $595 million in online sales, an 11 percent increase over Black Friday 2008. Cyber Monday reached $887 million in online spending, up 5 percent compared to a year ago. Google sites led the U.S. search market in November with 65.6 percent of the search queries conducted, up slightly from October. Yahoo trailed with 17.5 percent share (down 0.5 points from October), and Microsoft at 10.3 percent (an increase of 0.4 points from October). Ask grabbed 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL with 2.8 percent. Have You Read This? > Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers > Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday > Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged best buy, black, category, comparison, comscore, holiday, lego group, walmart, wit | Leave a comment

Google Shares Top Retail Searches for the Holiday Season

Google has shared the top retail searches for the 2009 holiday season. These results are based on the company's Insights for Search tool. "Using Google Insights for Search, we can see that the hottest toys over the last seven days include stalwarts like Pikachu and Legos, as well as newcomers, such as the Nerf Marshmellow Shooter and the surprise hit of the holiday season, a blanket-with-sleeves known as the Snuggie," says Eric Lopez of the Google Retail Team. "In the shopping category, we've seen Black Friday reach new heights, toping the rising search term list over the last 30 days as consumers continue to seek out the best prices," adds Lopez. "Consumers too continue to turn to familiar, top retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon and Macy's." Google has been encouraging retailers to start looking ahead to the rest of the Winter season with regards to what people will be searching for: things like Valentine's Day gifts, Prom dresses, wedding planning, ski equipment, etc. On a positive note for retailers, new research from Market Force Info finds that a good percentage of consumers intend to "splurge" on at least one item over the next few months. Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amazon, blanket with sleeves, google-search, holiday, holidays, matter-during, nerf, online retail, over-the-last, search, social e-commerce, stalwarts, walmart | Leave a comment

Amazon Offers Free One day Shipping For Kindle Orders On December 23

Amazon.com said today it is offering free one day shipping for orders of its Kindle placed on December 23 and promises delivery in time for Christmas. The company is also offering free two day shipping for Kindle orders placed today. Last week Amazon said its Kindle broke another record with its best sales day. The company did not provide any specific sales figures. Amazon boasts that its Kindle continues to be the most wished for, most gifted and best selling product across the company. "It's easy to get busy during the holidays, so we've decided to make it easy even for procrastinators to order Kindle, the #1 most wished for gift on Amazon, and get it delivered for free and in time for Christmas," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle . "With Kindle, you can give the gift of choosing over 390,000 books and more than 100 top newspapers and magazines from around the world and begin reading in less than 60 seconds." Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amazon, amp, black-friday, christmas, gift, holidays, kindle, noble-says, review and story, sales-record, selling-product, vice president, walmart, wins | Leave a comment

Online Holiday Spending Closes In On $20 Billion

Online holiday spending reached $19.9 billion in the first 41 days of the shopping season, marking a 3 percent increase over the same time period last year, according to the latest report from comScore. The most recent week saw above average online spending growth of 4 percent versus a year ago, two days shattered the $800 million mark in spending, led by Thursday, December 10, with $852 million. "Although this most recent week of holiday shopping did not produce the first $900 million spending day, we saw above average growth rates including a strong end to the week," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "Monday, December 14 - otherwise known as Green Monday - is likely to produce our heaviest online spending total for the season and represents our best opportunity to finally surpass that elusive $900 million spending threshold. The early part of this upcoming week should bring us the heaviest online spending days of the season before consumers refocus their attention on brick-and-mortar retail locations to finish up their holiday shopping." Since comScore began tracking ecommerce spending in 2001, it has recorded thirteen spending days over $800 million, each has occurred in the past three holiday seasons. The heaviest online spending day on record was Wednesday, December 9, 2008. Of the top ten spending days on record, four happened in 2009, four in 2008, and two in 2007. Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged attention, black, black-friday, Business, heaviest-online, holiday seasons, holiday shopping, online holiday spending, online-retailers, retail locations, review and story, shopping, strong-cyber, walmart, walmart-wins | Leave a comment

Increase Search Traffic with Horizontal Content

Those new to blogging or article writing have often been told to focus on one very niche topic. One narrow vertical. That has commonly been considered the way to gain credibility, readers, links, and ultimately traffic, which assuming the blog/site itself isn't your primary source of income, could lead to sales of your products/services. But is keeping it narrow really the best way to go? For some, it is. Another way to go would be to cover as much ground as you possibly can. Throw a wide net out there and see what you catch. Once you see what you've caught, maybe you can catch more in the same area. The thinking is that the more ground you cover, the more people you are potentially exposing your work to. It's going horizontal, rather than vertical. Do you think you could find greater success by keeping it narrow or broad? Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amazon, aol, deep pockets, media, primary source, review and story, thoughts, travel gadgets, walmart, work | Leave a comment

Social Networks Feed Holiday Shopping

If online retailers have a profitable holiday season - or even if they don't - they'll owe a "thank you" to social networks for helping out. Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amazon-wins, best buy, black-friday, downstream, facebook, points in time, specific-points, walmart | Leave a comment