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Hitwise eCommerce Report: Walmart.com Overtakes Amazon.com

Nov 28, 2005
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The following is an interesting news release from Hitwise:

ONLINE SHOPPING VISITS PEAK AGAIN ON THANKSGIVING DAY, UP 18.8% OVER 2004
Walmart.com Overtakes Amazon.com for the First Time

NEW YORK, Nov. 28, 2005 - For the third year in a row, Thanksgiving Day registered as the peak day of the year for online retailers and surpassing Black Friday as the busiest day in market share of visits to online stores. According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, an index of 100 leading online retailers showed an 18.8% growth in visits on Thanksgiving Day 2005 versus Thanksgiving Day 2004, and a 20.9% increase in visits on Black Friday 2005 versus the same time last year.

“For years, retailers have used offline sales on Black Friday as a barometer for the upcoming holiday season,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of research at Hitwise. “However, as we’ve seen in previous holiday seasons, market share of online visits to retailers can provide a more complete picture of both online shopping and online research for offline purchases. For the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, visits to retail sites were showing moderate single digit growth when compared to last year, but the recent 18.8% and 20.9% increases in market share of visits for this past Thursday and Friday are encouraging signs for both online and offline sales.”

One of the sites realizing the greatest increase in visits during the holiday weekend was Walmart.com. For the first time since Hitwise began tracking U.S. Internet users in 2003, Walmart.com has surpassed Amazon.com in market share of visits. Walmart.com nearly doubled its market share of visits by 98% from Wednesday November 23, 2005 to Thanksgiving Day, registering one of the largest increases in the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category. Amazon.com registered a 20% increase during the same time frame.

When comparing top sites for Thanksgiving Day 2005 to 2004, one of the new entrants is bestbuy.dailyshopper.com which ranked number 12 in the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds Category, which includes over 10,800 retailer sites.

“The spike in visits on Thanksgiving Day for bestbuy.dailyshopper.com, a site that provides localized sales circulars for Best Buy stores, is confirmation that online research for offline sales is a significant Internet behavior on Thanksgiving Day,” says Tancer. “Online and offline retailers must factor both research and online shopping activity when formulating their holiday marketing strategy.”

Filed under: Online Marketing
  • http://www.ontarget-media.com Manoj Aravindakshan

    i) Isn't it a bit counter-intuitive that the traffic to online retailers should peak on the Thanksgiving day rather than a couple of days (if not more) before that?

    ii) This particular news item needs to be viewed together with a previous Hitwise release which will give a better idea of why Wal-Mart.com has attracted more traffic than Amazon.com
    As this release tells you, search engines seem to be driving a significant amount of traffic to comparison shopping sites, with shoppers trying to find out the best prices, and then head off to the online retailers.

    When it comes to competing on price, are there many retailers around who could match Wal-Mart?

    Let me state the obvious– product pricing will continue to be one of the most important, if not THE most important, criteria that will attract buyers to the online stores.

    Manoj

  • http://www.10bestselling.net Adam Viener

    I agree. Product pricing is important. I would also offer that branded products and exclusive offerings will also become important for driving online sales.

    When merchants look at the price of the product, they need to include costs of shipping and taxes. This is one area where Walmart can get into trouble. They don't usually offer free shipping, rather offering deals like 99 cent shipping on toys. Also, with some many retail outlets, they are required to charge sales taxes, where e-merchants without physical locations do not have to charge these same taxes. That is why Buy.com often out prices Walmart.

    Adam