Traffic to online comparison shopping Web sites increased during the week ending November 3, 2007, compared to the week ending November 4, 2006, according to Hitwise. The 56% jump shows that consumers are beginning their holiday shopping research earlier than they did last year, partly because retailers have rolled out their promotions earlier.
“Baby boomers are the main visitors of comparison shopping websites and our search term data indicates that consumer electronics continue to be popular amongst these comparison shoppers,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise.
Yahoo! Shopping held 20% of the visits to comparison shopping sites this year, a 44% rise from last year. Smarter.com held 15% of the visits, while Bizrate held 14%.
Amazon, eBay, Target, Overstock.com, Wal-Mart, and JCPenney benefitted the most from the traffic channeled through comparison shopping sites.
Search engines drove the most traffic to these comparison shopping Web sites. Google referred 20% of the total visits, while Yahoo! referred 14%.
Laptop computers, Nintendo Wii, LCD TV, digital cameras, iPods, and Xbox360 were the leading product search terms that drove traffic to these comparison sites during the four weeks ending November 3, 2007.
Amazon.com remains the most visited retail Web site in the U.S. with 11.34% market share, while Wal-Mart (6.41%) and Half.com (5.71%) were second and third, respectively.
In terms of brand searches driving traffic to shopping and classifieds sites, “ebay,” “craigslist,” and “walmart” were the top three on the list. The top product searches driving traffic to these sites were “cell phones,” “wii,” and “uggs.”
Source:
http://hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/
us-20071108-comparison-shopping.php
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