The fifth annual Holiday eCommerce Index revealed the online holiday shopping season has officially started during the past two weeks, driven by a significant uptick in shopping at toys sites.
This year's online holiday shopping season started the second week in November, but kicked off stronger than last year by increasing 13 percent in home and work shopping visits as compared to 11 percent a year ago. Growth was calculated using the last week full week in October as a shopping baseline. Traffic growth rates during the same weeks in years 2001 and 2000 were 20 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
The categories of toys and video games, home and garden, and consumer electronics saw consistently large increases in shopping activity since base week ending October 26th. Traffic to toys and video game retailers jumped 99 percent during this period, led by ToysRUs (105 percent) and KB Holdings (96 percent).
"Toys and games got the holiday season started this year, with big spikes in many of the firms' online sessions," said Robert Leathern, director and senior analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "Other categories like consumer electronics, and home and garden have shown strong consistent growth throughout this year, and continue to grow traffic strongly as the holiday season is kicking off."
Home and garden sites saw consumer shopping sessions increase 27 percent over the past two weeks, with MarthaStewart.com rising 80 percent and Sears seeing 54 percent growth.
Consumer electronics showed strong progress with 25 percent overall category growth. According to Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, CircuitCity.com delivered over 53 million online advertising impressions during the previous week, and saw its online user sessions surge by 68 percent, followed by RitzCamera.com (65 percent) and SonyStyle.com (15 percent).
By comparison, heavy hitters Amazon and eBay increased user sessions 16 percent and two percent, respectively, since base week ending October 26th.
Research has found that consumers more intensely research their online and offline purchases on the Web when they have broadband Internet access.
"The persistent, always-on nature of broadband Internet connections means more consumers are conducting searches, doing comparison shopping and discovering more product- and merchant-related information. This also results in a noticeable offline impact -- more informed buyers," said Leathern. "Expect to see search engines and online shopping comparison sites play a major role in this season's holiday shopping."
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings