Canadians are dutifully filling up parking lots and flooding the malls this holiday season, but they're also putting a whole new spin on window – rather, Windows – shopping.
Canadians are increasingly visiting retailers on the Web, a study out by comScore Media Metrix Canada says while cautioning that visits don't automatically translate into sales.
In October, widely seen as the start of the frenzied shopping season, more than 15.1 million Canadians visited retailers on-line. From a year ago, retailers saw their unique visitors -- a measure of a user at a single computer -- rise 13.6 per cent, outpacing the total Internet use of 3.3 per cent.
Average minutes a month a user rose 61.6 per cent while average pages visited jumped 43.4 per cent.
“Visitors do not equal sales, nor does it offline,” Brent Lowe-Bernie, comScore president, said. “If they buy on-line or they research products and go to the store to buy, either way it's positive.”
Among the traditional retailers that saw visitor growth rise were Ikea.ca (137.8 per cent), HBC.com (82.6 per cent) and Futureshop.ca (47.3 per cent). Other retailers, such as Canadian Tire, Sears, Chapters, saw double-digit growth.
Established on-line retailer eBay saw 76.6 per cent more unique visitors in October.
The study highlighted the that women over the age of 18 are browsing retailer sites, saying that while retailers saw 13.6 per cent more visitors in the month, growth in women who visit jumped by 16.9 per cent.
In the two age categories of 25-34 and 34-44, growth rates were 25.4 per cent and 22.3 per cent respectively.
Retailers are increasingly wooing shoppers to their Web sites with the same offerings at their brick-and-mortar stores.
In the book and music segment, for example, Chapters.Indigo.ca has long been engaged in a price war with Amazon.com Inc. with both offering free shipping on orders of more than $39. Futureshop.ca, owned by Best Buy Co. Inc., also offers free shipping.
Other sites, such as Canadiantire.ca and Sears.ca, are offering free shipping this holiday season.
The study's buying power index reports, which measure visitors who are two to three times likely to purchase on-line. The top retailers in that index were Staples.ca, Chapters.Indigo.ca and Ticketmaster.ca.
