Mypoints, Netflix, Half.com Lead in Visitor Growth for Week Ending Dec. 16

Mypoints.com, Netflix.com, Half.com were the top gainers in average daily visitors among Internet sites for the week ending Dec. 16, the last one for which data is available.

Mypoints.com lead the pack, increasing the average daily visitors to its site by 519,000 over the same week a year ago, to 2.5 million, followed by Netflix, a DVD rental site, which saw its daily visitors jump 117 percent, or 316,000, to 586,000 average daily visitors. Half.com had 266,000 more visitors each day, bringing the total number of daily visitors to 886,000.

Broken out by category, furniture sites increased their average daily visitors by 59 percent, to 252,000; food sites rose 18 percent to 564,000; flowers-gifts-greetings were up 16 percent to 2 million; and movies sites increased 10 percent to 1.5 million.

The top sites, eBay.com and Amazon.com, both saw their number of unique visitors drop from last year. At 4.88 million unique visitors a day, eBay was off 1.7% from a year ago. Amazon.com was off by half: Its 2.54 million visitors reflected 49.2% of the levels seen last year. The much smaller barnesandnoble.com was off nearly 30%, generating 623,000 visitors during the week.

“Many consumers waited until late in the holiday season to make their gift purchases, and many were searching for late-season discounts,” said Jared Blank, Jupiter Research analyst, in a statement.

Blank continued, “The late-season momentum of this year’s online holiday traffic suggests that this year’s sales expectations are likely to be exceeded. Moreover, steady traffic to many bricks-and-mortar sites indicates that consumers are researching online with the intent of buying in the actual stores, highlighting the need for retailers to integrate their online and offline operations.”