Apple among fastest growing e-tailers for 2001 holidays

Market research firm Nielsen//NetRatings has announced its list of the fastest growing e-tailers for the 2001 holiday season, and Apple is on the list, outpacing Hewlett-Packard and even Amazon.com for year-over-year growth.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the total number of shopping trips taken to Apple’s Web site increased 71 percent between November and December of 2000 and November and December of 2001. Apple’s site saw 10,322,000 trips during those months in 2000 and 17,642,000 in 2001 (that number is representative of Web traffic in the United States, both in the office and from home).

The e-tailer with the largest percentage of increased traffic was Columbia House, whose traffic increased 219 percent year over year. Fingerhut.com, OverStock.com and OfficeDepot.com followed. Below Apple was BestBuy.com, hp.com, Staples.com, Amazon.com and CircuitCity.com.

The numbers that Nielsen//NetRatings quotes reflect the percentage of change from year to year, not overall volume. For that, Amazon.com far outpaced everyone else on the list, clocking in with nearly 199 million shopping trips for November and December. “In terms of sheer size, more shopping was conducted at Amazon.com than the other nine fastest growing e-tailers this holiday season,” said NetRatings vice president Sean Kaldor.

Nielsen//NetRatings acquires its data by measuring Web traffic culled from more than 233,000 individuals with access to the Internet in 29 countries around the world.