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Tuesday
- October 17, 2000
Online Retail Activity Flat in September
Buying activity at top online retailers remained flat
in September for a second straight month. Amazon.com, ticketmaster.com
and buy.com retained their positions as the top sites with
numbers of buyers virtually unchanged from August.
Amazon.com retained the No. 1 slot with 1.6
million buyers. Ticketmaster.com followed with 569,000 buyers
and buy.com was third with 428,000 buyers.
"This hopefully is the calm before the
storm – not the calm before the calm," said Cameron
Meierhoefer, Internet analyst for PC Data Online. "Online
retailers have become serious about turning a profit and
many have discarded the steep discounts they used to win
over consumers last year. This may be driving consumers to
shop around--both online and off -- for the best deal before
buying."
Elsewhere in the rankings, several familiar
names advanced. Pet product retailer pets.com moved from
No. 10 in August to No. 8 with 278,000 buyers. Toy retailer
etoys.com continued to show renewed strength, jumping from
No. 15 in August to No. 11 with 187,000 buyers. It jumped
19 positions the previous month. Also posting impressive
online sales were computer products retailer egghead.com
and catalog apparel retailer landsend.com at No. 13 and No.
16 respectively.
Custom print shop iprint.com returned to the
Top 20 at No. 17 in September with 112,000 buyers. The only
new addition to the top ranks was computer and electronics
etailer outpost.com at No. 18 with 109,000 buyers.
Data for online buying activity is gathered
through a proprietary software tool that tracks "unique
visitors" and "unique buyers" on each web
site. Each visitor or buyer is counted once, regardless of
how many times the individual visits a site or buys from
a site. This sample includes over 120,000 home Internet users.
Total home Internet users are estimated at approximately
81 million.
PC Data Online defines Internet retail sites
as web sites where visitors can actually purchase products.
They include neither shopping domains that provide free downloads,
product reviews, or purchasing incentives, such as coupons,
nor other types of e-commerce sites, such as auction, travel
reservation or financial service sites.
E-Tailers Hit the Relaunch Key
According to Business Week:
"October is here, and for e-tailers that
means it's relaunch season. Seems like every dot-com with
a Christmas dream is trotting out new services, new navigation
capabilities, better graphics, and wider selection. They
hope to generate buzz in October that will turn to sales
in November -- and happy virtual holidays in December. 'This
is a make-or-break Christmas for e-tailers,' says Kenny Kurtzman,
CEO of online luxury-seller Ashford.com.
Consumers are starting to think about holiday
shopping, and online merchants need to make their case while
the airwaves are still relatively quiet. By November, traditional
stores will be in full swing with network-TV ads and other
engaging marketing, which could drown out e-merchants..."
Click here for the full story.
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Return to October
2000 News Archive
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