friday

Pessimistic onlookers believed retailers' websites would do little more than attract tumbleweeds this Black Friday.  A sort of reverse situation came into being, however, as stampede-worthy traffic levels were significant enough to cause slowdowns and at least one crash.

A 22 percent increase in sales from last year's day after Thanksgiving put more money in the pockets of online retailers this year.

Below is a summary of key data points from Hitwise regarding Black Friday Traffic (week ending Nov 17th)

Online traffic to Black Friday advertising websites is rising earlier in 2007 compared to 2006, Hitwise reported today. Online traffic to a custom category of Black Friday advertising websites increased 52 percent for the week ending Nov. 10, 2007 compared to Nov. 11, 2006.

People who are planning to shop on the day after Thanksgiving or Black Friday are looking online at Black Friday Web sites that feature advanced copies of retailer's discounts.

The early birds are rising earlier this year as searches for Black Friday-related websites spike a bit earlier than last year.

Wal-Mart is threatening legal action against some Web sites that may release its Black Friday ads in advance.

I missed last week (My laptop started with the “laptop death rattle” - so it was a scramble to do data backups, find and migrate to a new machine). One of the worst parts of being a solo shop is being your own IT guy. Excuses aside - here’s twice the friday favorite goodness for this week.