Online Comparison Shopping Up 56% Over Last Year
Yahoo! Shopping received the highest market share of visits within the category at 20%, with its market share increasing 44% from the same week last year. Smarter.com and Bizrate followed with 15% and14 %, respectively.
-- The retailers benefiting the most from the top comparison shopping websites were Amazon, eBay, Target, Overstock.com, Wal-Mart, and JCPenney in the percentage of downstream traffic from those same sites for the week ending Nov. 3, 2007.
-- Search engines were the main driver of traffic to the top comparison shopping websites with Google referring 20% of visits and Yahoo! Search referring 14% for the week ending Nov. 3, 2007.
-- The leading product search terms driving traffic to the comparison shopping websites were laptop computers, Nintendo Wii, LCD TV, digital cameras, iPods, and Xbox360 for the four weeks ending Nov. 3, 2007.
"As we enter the holiday shopping season, consumers are beginning to research potential gift purchases and compare prices earlier than last year, especially with retailers beginning to roll out seasonal promotions," said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise. "Baby boomers are the main visitors of comparison shopping websites and our search term data indicates that consumer electronics continue to be popular amongst these comparison shoppers."
The share of traffic from online users aged 45+ increased 38% across the top comparison shopping sites. Shopzilla had the biggest increase in traffic with a 58% gain.