San Francisco, CA, December 30--Visits to Web shopping and classifieds sites jumped 25.6 percent from the year-ago holiday season and peaked on Thanksgiving Day, Internet research company Hitwise said.
During the holiday period -- from Nov. 1 to Dec. 25 -- those sites claimed 9.1 percent of all U.S. Internet visits, Hitwise said.
The data comes on the heels of news that online retailer Amazon.com had record-breaking sales, and amid expectations that the whole sector had a healthy holiday season.
ComScore Networks recently bumped up its forecast to call for year-on-year online holiday sales, excluding travel and auctions, to rise 28 percent to more than $15.5 billion. Its prior call was for growth of 23 percent to 26 percent.
Hitwise's shopping and classified advertising category includes sites from eBay.com and Walmart.com to Craigslist.org and classifieds.yahoo.com.
Visits to large Web retailers peaked over a range of days. In particular, traffic to Dell.com, eBay.com and Amazon.com spiked on Nov. 10, Dec. 9 and Dec. 11.
On the other hand, visits to the sites of major brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target tended to peak on Nov. 25 -- or Thanksgiving Day -- as consumers used the Web to research items before heading to stores for the traditionally heavy "Black Friday" shopping day.
Bill Tancer, vice president of research at Australia-based Hitwise, said this year's online holiday traffic patterns were virtually identical to those from 2003.
"Consumers behave in a very predictable way," Tancer said.
That predictability could impact the way marketing dollars are spent in the future, he said.
