Taken from Computer World!
Holiday shoppers crush online stores
By Sharon Machlis
For Internet retailers dreaming of a green Christmas, early reports are showing that their holiday wishes may come true.
"It's blowing our doors off," said Russ Gillam, vice president of electronic commerce at Buena Vista Internet Group, the corporate division that manages The Walt Disney Co.'s online store.
The Friday through Sunday period after Thanksgiving turned in the three biggest revenue days ever at Disney Online -- "many times bigger" than last year, Gillam said. The Burbank, Calif., company will not reveal specific figures.
Even more encouraging: Disney's all-important "conversion rate," which measures how many of a site's window-shoppers actually buy something, is up 65% to 70% above last year.
At Eddie Bauer Inc., revenue rose almost 300% last week compared with last year.
While there wasn't much extra Web buying last year on so-called "Black Friday," the big shopping day after Thanksgiving, "this year, we saw a really huge spike in our business," said Judy Neuman, vice president of interactive media at the Redmond, Wash.-based retailer. "Friday was a great surprise."
Meanwhile, leading Internet bookseller Amazon.com reported holdiday weekend sales grew fourfold.
Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., now predicts that online retail sales for all of this year will hit $7.8 billion and soar to $108 billion by 2003 -- rising 69% a year. That $108 billion would represent about 6% of the U.S. retail industry.
Don S.
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