Apparel Sites Show Significant Traffic Gains

According to Web traffic numbers by Media Metrix, the apparel category has continued to surprise many observers by posting a 60 percent increase in traffic for the week ending December 5th.

Media Metrix released its weekly report on unique site visitors yesterday, ranking sites by total traffic and growth percentage. Amazon.com topped the total traffic list with more than 6,000,000 unique visitors for the week, showing a 100 percent gain over last year’s numbers. Amazon’s nearest competitor for traffic was eBay, with 4,272,000 unique visitors.

The top one-week gainer among individual sites was KBKids.com, with a visitor increase of 132 percent. However, even with its stellar improvement, the site was a distant third to eToys and Toysrus.com.

Other sites that experienced one-week visitor growth in excess of 100 percent included Shopping.com, Sears.com, Wal-Mart.com and Overstock.com.

Apparel Coming Alive?

This good news for online clothing sales comes just in time, as some industry watchers were ready to declare apparel a holiday no-show. The increase of 134 percent for the year bears out the claims of many clothing e-tailers, who have been vociferously citing evidence that consumers were beginning to purchase apparel online.

Toy Sites Shift in Rankings

Notably, ToysRUs has finally showed the toy world that a powerful offline brand can carry some e-weight. The giant toy chain has spent a year struggling with its Net strategy, and a series of November crashes seemed to foreshadow a disastrous e-holiday.

Last week, the site showed strong resiliency, posting a 451 percent visitor gain over last year, and stepping into a tight race with rival eToys. During the critical two-week period from November 22nd to December 5th, ToysRUs actually surpassed eToys in weekly average unique visitors.

Drugstore Sites Soaring

Other sectors of e-commerce are apparently cruising along as well. According to figures from PC Data Online, health and beauty Web sites showed significant growth from October to November.

The study reports that Drugstore.com Web site ranked sixth with 316,000 unique buyers, while Planetrx.com ranked seventh with 286,000 unique buyers.

Mothernature.com came in 10th place with 239,000 unique buyers.

Overall, the Lands’ End Web site posted the largest jump among those tracked — rising from 24th place in October to 8th place in November with 228,000 unique buyers.

Metered Households

PC Data Online currently meters 85,000 households in the U.S. in order to collect its data. However, the company intends to increase the survey group by 200,000 next year, by adding international and business-to-business surveying data.