Online 2010 holiday winners emerge

Walmart, Target and Best Buy attracted record levels of customers to their websites during November, according to data released this week by the online measurement firm comScore. Retailers have come to expect a surge in traffic to their sites as the holiday approach and during November that proved to be the case and then some.

Walmart and Target both experienced a 44% increase in the number of unique visitors to their sites during November when compared with October. The surge pushed Walmart to the 20th spot on comScore’s ranking of the top 50 U.S. online properties with a total of nearly 52 million unique visitors, while Target landed in the 27th position with nearly 40 million unique visitors. The number of visitors to Best Buy’s website grew at an even faster 75% when comparing November to October, which gave the company 28 million unique visitors and a 41st ranking on the comScore top 50 list.

“As the holiday season kicked off in November, Americans were quick to take advantage of retailers’ early promotions and saving in crossing a f few items off their shopping list,” said Jeff Hackett, EVP comScore Media Metrix. “Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, came in as the heaviest online spending day on record in the U.S. which contributed a strong portion of traffic growth at retail and coupon sites.”

While Walmart, Target and Best Buy advanced their position on comScore’s top 50 list dominated by the likes of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, Amazon.com remains king of the retail hill. It attracted roughly 84 million unique visitors during November, placing it 10th on the top properties list.

The November figures are impressive when compared with October, but less so when compared with November 2009. In fact, unique visitor growth on a year-over-year basis has moderated somewhat, with Walmart, Target and Best Buy posting increases of 5%, 2% and 7%, respectively. Amazon.com’s unique visitor growth increased 8% when compared with November 2009.