Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Online Holiday Sales Down 3 Percent

Holiday shopping on e-commerce sites declined by 3 percent, according to the latest numbers released by comScore, which tracking online spending and internet traffic. comScore reported Tuesday that spending for the holiday season, beginning November 1st and ending December 23rd, totaled $25.5 billion, down 3 percent versus 2007. The results were the first decrease for holiday seasons since 2001, when comScore began gathering e-commerce statistics. comScore also reported the top e-commerce sites for the month, showing that sites with the most Internet traffic increases were HP, with a gain of 28 percent increase in visitors over last year; Apple, with a 19 percent increase; and Amazon, with a 7 percent gain. The sites with the most unique visitors for the period were eBay, with 85M uniques; Amazon with 76.2M uniques, Wal-Mart, with 51.5M uniques, and Target, with 46.8M uniques. Losers for the period were Circuit City, which had a drop of 21% in the number of unique visitors to the site in December; Dell, with a drop of 17%; and overstock.com, with a drop of 16%. The overall drop in holiday spending came despite a jump in purchases on both Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday for the year.