January 18, 2008 | Friday
That holiday shopping bonanza - and the search connection
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Marketing |Online Sales |PPC |Search Engines |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft |SEO
Don’t worry, stats fans - we aren’t done analysing the holiday shopping metrics yet. The latest measurements are out, and they make for interesting - and encouraging - reading.
ComScore reports:
Holiday shopping resulted in several retail categories experiencing significant growth during the month. The fragrances/cosmetics category climbed 30 percent to 21.5 million visitors, making it the top-gaining category for December...The consumer goods category once again saw significant growth for the second consecutive month, gaining 23 percent to nearly 36 million visitors.
The retail - music category posted a 17-percent increase to nearly 28 million visitors...Other retail categories experiencing strong growth for the month included jewelry/luxury goods/accessories (up 22 percent to 24 million visitors), retail-food (up 14 percent to 19 million visitors), retail-sports/outdoors (up 13 percent to 36.6 million visitors), and flowers/gifts/greetings (up 12 percent to 44.6 million visitors).
Note that these numbers are US-only, but they indicate trends which seem to be global.
Another global trend? Procrastination. That’s what ComScore Media Metrix attributes December’s sky-high shopping and spending numbers to. Many retailers are now extending their guaranteed shipping dates closer and closer to December 25, and those e-commerce offerings which do so will certainly win big with shoppers as the day inches closer.
In related news, ComScore also released its list of the top 50 US web properties for December, as measured by visitors. Make of this what you will:
Yahoo! Sites continued its reign as the top U.S. Web property in December with nearly 137 million visitors, followed by Google Sites (133 million visitors) and Microsoft Sites (120 million visitors). Apple Inc., which benefited from interest in popular holiday gifts like the iPod and iPhone, moved up one spot to capture position 10 with 47.7 million visitors.
Okay, I’ll tell you what to make of it: Search properties are the most popular on the web. They may not be as trendy or sexy as Apple’s sleek, shiny products...but they might just lead you to a very good deal on one of them.
Customers know this. Do they find you when they take to the search engines?
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