Black Friday Shoppers Head for eBay

The auction site topped the list of Black Friday online shopping destinations with 7.5 million unique visitors.

by Helen Leggatt

Nielsen/Netratings report that there was a 12 percent increase in their Holiday eShopping Index as the nation logged on for some Thanksgiving bargain hunting. That figure is down 17 percent from the 2004 to 2005 index.

The three most popular sites were eBay, followed by Amazon.com (3.4 million unique visitors) and finally Wal-Mart Stores (3.2 million).

eBay didn’t experience as much of a surge in visitors as the likes of BestBuy.com, which saw a 316 percent growth in visitors from the previous Friday. Circuitcity.com also had a massive rise in visitors and this is reflected in a 211 percent rise across that product category.

Cost comparison sites, such as Shopping.com and PriceGrabber.com both saw year-on-year increases in visitors, with bargain hunters comparing prices with online and offline outlets.

Overall, online sales were down and a spokesman for VISA puts this down to the good weekend weather.

It remains to be seen what happens on Cyber Monday when, instead of browsing, the public are expected to be buying. With the increased speed and efficiency of deliveries via internet ordering, it will be interesting to see whether or not consumers will wait until later in the year to start purchasing online.