Top US web properties: online shoppers score discounts with coupon sites

(Renata Osinska)

During the busy holiday shopping season, consumers raced online to find shopping deals and discounts from retailers and coupon websites.

The offer of free shipping and attractive discounts was all the enticement shoppers needed to spend their dollars on the web this year.  

"As the holiday shopping season kicked-off in November, Americans were quick to take advantage of retailers' early promotions and savings in crossing a few items off their shopping list," said Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix.

"Cyber Monday - the Monday after Thanksgiving - came in as the heaviest online spending day on record in the U.S. which contributed a strong portion of traffic growth at retail and coupon sites."

Coupon sites saw the biggest increase in traffic during November said market researcher comScore in their report on the top online properties for November 2010, released on December 21.

A record 44 million people in the US visited a coupon site during month, up 40 percent since October.

Groupon grabbed the top ranking across all coupon sites during the month with 10 million unique visitors (up 54 percent from October) while CouponCabin.com and Coupons, Inc. took second and third places with 8.8 million visitors and 6.4 million visitors respectively.

Amazon Sites were the top ranking retail sites in November with 83.9 million unique visitors followed by Wal-Mart (51.8 million visitors), Apple.com Worldwide Sites (40.3 million visitors) and Target Corporation (39.8 million visitors).

In November Yahoo! Sites were the number one property in the US with 181 million visitors closely followed by Google and Microsoft Sites with 178.7 million and 175.7 million visitors for the month respectively.

Some of the biggest movers during the month included Target, which jumped up by 13 positions to number 27; Wal-Mart, up 10 places to number 20; and BestBuy.com Sites, leaping into the top 50 ranking in 41st place with a 75 percent increase in visitors.

ComScore's Top 10 Properties in the US for the month of November 2010:

1. Yahoo! Sites - 180,987,000 unique visitors
2. Google Sites -  178,726,000 unique visitors
3. Microsoft Sites - 175,732,000 unique visitors
4. FACEBOOK.COM - 151,722,000 unique visitors
5. AOL, Inc. - 114,484,000 unique visitors
6. Ask Network - 92,369,000 unique visitors
7. Glam Media - 89,864,000 unique visitors
8. CBS Interactive - 88,017,000 unique visitors
9. Turner Digital - 86,452,000 unique visitors
10. Amazon Sites - 83,875,000 unique visitors