Gift-buying Via Computer Skyrockets
By Dana Greenlee, Co-Host WebTalkGuys Radio

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Q: How much is e-commerce playing a part in holiday shopping?
We’ve become accustom to triple digit growth rates over the past several years. We here at Jupiter predict that the 2001 holiday online retail and travel sales will reach approximately $11.9 billion, compared to last year's $10.8 billion. It was dragged down a bit by travel, which was down by 8%. The actual traffic numbers coming in over the past few weeks show traffic levels about 40% above last year. More people are shopping online and consumers are allocating a greater percentage of their holiday budget to shopping on the Internet.

Q: What do you think is going on there? Are people shopping from home because they don’t want to go out of the house?
I think it’s more that people are becoming more comfortable with the online shopping process. It’s also because more people are coming online. About a year ago there were about 125 million people online. There are about 142 million people online now. Another reason more are shopping on the web is that retailers' early-purchase incentives, such as free delivery for early orders, have contributed to a solid start to the holiday shopping season.

Q: Are more people going to the big brand ‘bricks and clicks’ web sites or are smaller sites driving this surge?
The bigger retailers are likely to have more stable and serious efforts online. Two years ago, Wal-Mart was sort of staggering online. Their strategies were changing fairly regularly. Many are very stable now. Look at Best Buy and Circuit City, who are the two biggest retailers of consumer electronics. They’re promoting their web sites very prominently on their TV commercials. This is a big sign of confidence.

Q: What kinds of items are people buying online this holiday season?
The biggest category in terms of growth is toys and games. Visitor numbers to those web sites rose 123 percent. Electronics came in second with a 97 percent gain, followed by home and garden. Sites selling movies had increased traffic to 1.4 million average daily unique visitors. This was mainly to Netflix.com and the Columbia House websites. Apparel sites also are seeing traffic up 67 percent, with 1.6 million average daily unique visitors.

Q: It’s hard to imagine buying clothes online without trying them on.
It’s interesting, but it’s the more affluent web shoppers that are buying apparel. Gap.com had the highest percentage of visitors with household incomes over $100,000. About 30% of the buyers at LLBean.com, EddieBauer.com and LandsEnd.com have household incomes greater than $100,000.

Q: Do you see different online shopping patterns between men and women?
Guys tend to shop the computer and electronic websites. For instance, about 83 percent of visitors to Dell.com, HP.com and Compusa.com are men.. Conversely, women skew toward apparel sites. Women composed 70 percent of visitors to Oldnavy.com, Spiegel.com and JCPenny.com.

Q: Were there really big e-commerce winners online?
Some of the top sites with the highest percentage gain in average daily visitors in the second week in December were Symantec.com, Netflix.com, Bmgmusicservice.com, Ebay.com and Amazon.com.


A full audio interview with Ken Cassar, analyst for Jupiter Media Metrix, can be heard at webtalkguys.com.

WTG

(Dana Greenlee is president of LoudVox.com and co-host of the WebTalkGuys Radio Show. WebTalkGuys, a Washington-based talk show features technology news and interviews. It is broadcast on CNET Radio in San Francisco and Boston, on the web at CNET Radio, WebTalkGuys Radio and via the XM satellite network. Past show and interviews are also webcast via the Internet at http://www.webtalkguys.com).