Early this year, Circuit City announced that it was closing all of its stores after being in business for 60 years. Gizmodo is pointing to a screenshot from Circuit City’s website now, however, suggesting that the company will be back in online form.
As you can see, the site is not operational at the moment, but will be soon. How will it do though if it does re-open though? The brick and mortar version of Circuit City obviously couldn’t cut the mustard any longer, but the company’s online presence was on something of a downward spiral as well.
Back in January, Murdok referenced research from Hitwise indicating that web traffic was suffering. “For the week of Thanksgiving, which is typically a peak traffic week, the market share of visits to CircuitCity.com had dropped 33% from the previous year within the Appliances & Electronics category,” Hitwise’s Heather Dougherty reported.
The competition online hasn’t eased up at all while Circuit City’s been out of the game. In fact, Best Buy, one of its biggest competitors has launched an affiliate program and API that has the potential for putting its products all over the web and driving all kinds of business its way.
I wonder if Circuit City has similar plans when it relaunches. The web has far more competition, but it also has room for way more opportunities and innovation. It’s going to be really interesting to see what Circuit City has up its sleeve, and perhaps even more so – if it will work.
