Walmart.com Passes Department Store Rivals

Figures for the week of Thanksgiving indicate that Walmart.com, the relaunched Web site for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., had more visitors than the sites of any of its department store rivals.

Walmart.com had an average of 321,000 “unique” visitors per day that week, according to Media Metrix, a firm that measures Internet usage. A unique visitor is someone who visits the site at least once in a day regardless of multiple visits.

Walmart.com had 1.6 million unique visitors during the entire month of October, when the site was shut down for all but four days. That still put the world’s largest retailer at No. 4 for department stores, behind Web sites operated by J.C. Penney, Sears and Target — all traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Media Metrix listed Walmart.com with 1.4 million visitors for September.

Walmart.com was closed Oct. 3 and relaunched after renovation on Halloween.

Although Walmart.com was No. 1 among department store Web sites for the week of Thanksgiving, it ranked No. 9 among all retail Web sites. Amazon.com ranked No. 1, with an average of 1.5 million unique visitors per day.

Target fell to No. 19 in the overall list with 198,000 unique visitors per day. J.C. Penney was No. 20 with 197,000 visitors per day, and Sears was ranked 23rd with 181,000 unique visitors per day.

Media Metrix listed Walmart.com as No. 3 among its “Top 10 gaining retail sites,” with a 68 percent increase from 191,000 unique visitors per day for the week ending Nov. 19 compared with 321,000 per day for the seven-day period ending Nov. 26. PeoplePC.com led in that category with an 87 percent increase, but it had only 103,000 unique visitors per day as of Nov. 26.

Media Metrix said overall online retail sales were up 40 percent compared with sales for Thanksgiving week in 1999.