Saturday, December 2, 2000

Retail Sites Up By 40% in Unique Visitors

Media Metrix, the pioneer and leader in Internet and Digital Media measurement worldwide, today released the first installment of its Holiday 2000 E-commerce Series, revealing the first comprehensive retail Web-site measurement results for the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday among users at home and work combined. The number of different people visiting retail sites during the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday increased by 40.3 percent compared to the same week last year, with the Media Metrix Online Shopping Index climbing from 25.1 million to 35.2 million unique visitors.

Jupiter Research, in a separate announcement today, revealed that over 50 percent of online retailers say they are confident they will be able to handle high volumes of orders this holiday season versus last year, when only 10 percent were confident of their sites’ infrastructures. Jupiter cautions, however, that online retailers could leave shoppers hanging in the event of a site crash, due to their lack of customer-service contingency plans.

Additional highlights from Media Metrix:

- Amazon.com and Mypoints.com were the number-one and number-two retail sites overall for the week of Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. Amazon.com had 960,000 and 1.5 million average daily unique visitors in 1999 and 2000, respectively, and Mypoints.com had 897,000 and 1.4 million average daily unique visitors in 1999 and 2000, respectively.

- Peoplepc.com and Radioshack.com were the top gaining retail sites during Thanksgiving week in 2000, with 87.3 and 82.7 percent increases in their average daily unique visitors over the prior week, respectively.

- Books and Computers were the top retail subcategories during Thanksgiving week, with 2.1 million and 2.0 million average daily unique visitors, respectively. Footwear and Games were the top gaining retail subcategories, with 64.0 and 40.0 percent increases in their average daily unique visitors over the prior week, respectively.

- Because Media Metrix is able to report Internet usage at home and work combined, it observed a decline in visitors to retail sites on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, when most Americans were away from their workplace and home computers. Daily traffic to retail sites declined by 23.5 percent and 16.3 percent for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, respectively, compared to the Thursday and Friday the prior week. However, traffic increased 6.9 percent and 8.0 percent the Saturday and Sunday of Black Friday weekend, respectively, compared to the Saturday and Sunday the prior week.

“Despite the widely publicized snags consumers experienced while shopping online last holiday season, consumer confidence online remains strong as indicated by the year-over-year increase in the Media Metrix Online Shopping Index,” said Anne Rickert, measurement analyst, Media Metrix.

Web Talk Applications to Drive Telephony Growth
IDC revealed last week that Web talk applications such as hi-fidelity PC-to-phone calling, unified communications, voice-enabled ecommerce, and Web-based conference calling will drive total IP telephone traffic to 470 billion minutes in 2005.

According to Mark Winther, IDC group vice president of telecommunications research, "This increased usage is nearly 100 orders of magnitude greater than the 5.5 billion IP telephony minutes projected for 2000. By 2005, IP telephony will account for more than 47% of total U.S. long distance and international voice traffic."

Prior to Web talk, the fastest-growing communications services were Web-mail services like HotMail. Launched on July 4, 1996, HotMail was the first free Web-based email service and passed 1 million registered subscribers in its first six months; ICQ, the first real-time text chat service, was launched in December 1996 and took five months to reach 1 million registered users. Both services continued to experience explosive growth and wealth creation for early investors. But both are dwarfed by success of Web talk services, which reached the 1 million subscriber point in weeks. For example, dialpad.com, which on October 18, 1999 was the first to launch free PC-to-phone calling services, reached 1 million registered users in 60 days. Moreover, active subscribers are generating huge volumes on Web talk services such as PhoneFree.com, whose users are logging in excess of 40 million minutes per month.

Emerging communications ASPs and traditional carriers alike face enormous opportunities to capitalize on the potential of Web talk services.

"Telephony is the next breakaway IP opportunity. Even more significantly, enhanced Web talk applications are the solution to the death spiral of long distance voice telephony pricing. Smart companies will integrate the power of the Internet with the familiarity of the telephone to revitalize the global $800 billion telecommunications industry," Winther said.

News Tidbits (appears every day on front page)
- Etown.com has let go 22% of its staff just days after news broke that there was a uninionization attempt. Etown.com management say the two are unrelated.

-Pets.com, which failed to succeed as part of the Internet revolution, has received acclaim for donating food to hungry sled dogs in Alaska. Even though the company is out of business, they made the unusual move of making sure its food stock went to good use.

Return to December 2000 News Archive