'Tis the season

Traffic to the Hitwise 100 Retail Index, composed of the top 100 retail websites, received 5.07 percent of all US visits on Nov. 26 (Cyber Monday) - an increase of 26 percent compared with last year's Cyber Monday, which received 4.02 percent of visits, Hitwise reported (via MarketingCharts).

"Traffic to the electronics and videogames categories experienced the strongest growth as shoppers searched for products such as GPS navigation systems and Nintendo Wii consoles," said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise.

Those findings were consistent with those of Nielsen Online, which also released (pdf) a list of the 10 fastest-growing product categories for the week:

Top Cyber Monday Retail Websites

For the third year in a row, Amazon.com was the most visited retail website on Cyber Monday, receiving 10 percent of visits among the top 100 retail websites, Hitwise said. Walmart.com and Target.com were second and third, respectively, followed by BestBuy.com and CircuitCity.com.

Again, those findings were similar (but not identical) to those released by Nielsen Online (unlike Hitwise, it takes auction sites into account); Nielsen also compared Black Friday's visits to Cyber Monday's:

Traffic to comparison-shopping websites also increased significantly - 47 percent - from last year, Hitwise said.

Online Holiday Shopping Update

• Visits to the Hitwise U.S. Retail 100 Index websites were up 43 percent for the week ended Nov. 24 versus the previous week (ended Nov. 17). U.S. traffic is up 15 percent compared to the same week last year (Nov. 25, 2006).

• Walmart.com took over the top spot as most visited website within the Index last week, receiving 11 percent of U.S. visits. Amazon.com received the second-most visits with 9 percent.

• CircuitCity.com was again the biggest gainer for the week, as its website traffic increased 94 percent compared with the previous week.

• The Nintendo Wii and iPod were again the most popular product search terms sending visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites for the week ending Nov. 24. The terms "wii," "nintendo wii" and "ipod" were the top three product searches.
• The Microsoft Zune made its debut among the top 10 searches this past week, coming as the fifth most-searched for product.