Traditional bricks and mortar companies with an online presence recorded significant growth in hits over the Christmas season, according to ACNielson eRatings.com, winning out over the pure-play dot-coms.
Harvey Norman, David Jones and Sanity Music were all ranked highly as several of the fastest-growing specialist shopping domains surfed from Australian homes during December.
Harvey Norman's hits grew by 72 per cent during December, closely followed by pure-play dot-com Wishlist (44 per cent growth), Sanity (29 per cent growth), David Jones (28 per cent growth), Ticketek (24 per cent), eBay's parent site (15 per cent growth), Amway (14.5 per cent growth), eBay's Australian site (14.3 per cent growth), amazon.com (13 per cent growth) and cdnow.com (9 per cent growth).
"The latest figures point to the fact that established retailers with a Web presence are starting to make inroads in relation to the online shopping sector," said Mark Henning, director of sales and marketing at ACNielson eRatings.com. "This is a trend we expect to increase over the next 12 months as surfers bookmark sites that offer the level of security and confidence associated with a well-known and trusted brand."eRatings.com estimates 23 per cent of surfers (over a million Australians) visited an e-tailing site during this period, visiting an average of two shopping sites on each occasion and spent an average of 10 minutes at each site.