Compete Releases Top 25 Retail Web Sites for July 2009

BOSTON – (August 27, 2009) – Compete, a TNS Media company, today released an industry category snapshot - a monthly ranking of the top 25 most-trafficked retail Web sites.  In July 2009, Amazon retained the top spot on the list, continuing its steady 18-month rise in unique visitors as consumers continue to flock to discount retailers to stretch their dollars further. Though it didn’t make the top 15, Bed Bath & Beyond experienced the largest month-over-month gain on the list (21 percent) driven in part by highly-active back-to-school shoppers.  Finally, Walgreens exited the month still leading rival CVS, but the distance between the nation’s leading pharmacies continues to shrink.  CVS.com grew at a higher rate than Walgreens.com for the month (15 percent versus 5 percent increase) and continues to gain ground on Walgreens.com on the heels of CVS.com traffic doubling year-over-year.

Amazon Stays at Number One

Budget-conscious consumers seem to be finding a safe haven with the discount retailers, and this, in part, helped Amazon.com retain its number-one spot on the top 25 list.  The site attracted 67.2 million unique visitors (UVs) in July, more than double the traffic of the next closest retailer Walmart.  Amazon has benefited from consumer’s flight to value online, as well as growing consumer interest in its popular line of Kindle eBook readers.  Compete’s analysis of Amazon’s Kindle success continues here.


Going Back to School

Despite doomsday predictions for the 2009 back-to-school (BTS) shopping season, the number of BTS searches – including terms like “school supplies” and “back to school” – rose to 1.7 million in July 2009 (up from 1.2 million UVs in July 2008).  Among the top ranked retail sites, sites catering to back-to-school shopping such as Staples, Target and Wal-Mart all experienced traffic growth during July.   Bed, Bath & Beyond (now number 18 on the list) received the biggest month-over-month gain in July, however, increasing 21 percent. Compete’s analysis of back-to-school trends continues here.
    
  
Back to Shopping

With the back to school season right around the corner, parents and students are gearing up; increasingly, that means online shopping at popular e-commerce Web sites.  Overall, consumers this year are spending more time researching their back to school needs on the Web, as evidenced by the 1.67 million back to school-related searches performed in July 2009, compared to 1.23 million in the same month last year.  Walmart.com (32.6 million UVs) and Target.com (29.8 million UVs) both saw an increase in back to school search traffic and held their ranks in the top 50 Web sites for July 2009.  BedBathandBeyond.com also cracked the top 250 sites in July, growing by 21 percent to 6.23 million UVs.  For more details on how back to school searches will affect e-commerce this season,  click here.
 

CVS Pushes Walgreens Online

Rounding out the storylines for July is the continued rise of CVS.com. Both CVS.com and Walgreens.com saw their traffic rise month-over-month, but CVS.com’s growth outpaced that of its rival 15 percent versus 5 percent.  Although Walgreens.com continues to maintain a sizeable online lead over CVS.com, the CVS.com has narrowed the gap of late.  And, CVS.com traffic has risen 103 percent year-over-year since the site was re-launched last summer. Stay tuned for this ongoing competition for pharmacy visitors.

“Back-to-school shopping played a role in shaping the top 25 rankings this month,” said Matt Pace, managing director for retail and consumer products at Compete.   “With the August drop in U.S. consumer sentiment, online sales growth heading into the fall will be a harbinger of retailers’ fortunes for the upcoming holiday season.”

Each month, Compete takes a look at the top movers within one of its 225 industry categories.  Month-over-month traffic gains for individual Web sites can be a direct result of specific marketing or advertising campaigns.  In this way, the top-ranked sites become much more than a list, they are an effective way to assess which competitors’ strategies are working and why.

About Compete
Compete, a unit of TNS Media, helps the world’s top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Leading marketers such as Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Hyundai Motor America, Upromise, Chrysler, and Verizon Wireless rely on Compete's services to create effective online experiences and highly profitable advertising campaigns.  Compete’s online behavior database—the largest in the industry—makes the web as ingrained in marketing as it is in people’s lives.

Compete was founded in 2000 and is located in Boston, MA, with offices throughout the U.S.  For more information about us, please visit http://www.competeinc.com/, or to join the conversation visit http://www.compete.com/.

About TNS media
Established in more than 30 countries, TNS Media explores all the media—print, radio, TV, Internet, social media, cinema and outdoors worldwide, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and offers a full range of insights, analyses and audience measurement services.

TNS Media combines the deepest expertise in the industry to provide media and marketing intelligence including advertising expenditure monitoring, advertising creation monitoring, audience measurement, market influence analytics, online consumer behavior tracking, news monitoring, sports sponsorship evaluation and more.  The TNS Media companies track more than 3 million brands and provide vital market intelligence to 16,000 customers in the world. http://www.tnsmediagroup.com

About Kantar Group
The Kantar Group is one of the world's largest research, insight and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of more than 20 specialist companies – including the recently-acquired TNS – the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and actionable insights for the global business community. Its 26,500 employees work across 80 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group’s services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.  The Kantar Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of WPP Group plc. For further information, please visit http://www.kantargroup.com