• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 17, 2019

The top 100 shopping sites saw an average of 147.3 million daily visits from August through October, according to recent data.

Traffic rose by 22% in November -- partly fueled by Black Friday, when traffic jumped 137% to 349 million visits. On Cyber Monday, the second day of December, traffic rose 112% to 312.3 million visits.

Similarweb’s analysis is based on traffic and trends related to the top 100 shopping sites, which focuses on apparel, general merchandise in marketplaces and consumer electronics between November and December 2019.

Jamie Drayton, lead retail consultant at SimilarWeb, said consumers are using fewer apps this holiday for shopping.

Across top retail apps, daily active users fell 6% year-over-year during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amazon Shopping was the only app to see an increase of 2%. All other apps analyzed fell between 20% and 59%.

“I would have thought that app traffic would spike, but that’s not the case,” Drayton said.

Overall traffic to affiliate partners during Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to decline during the past three years. Between 2018 and 2019, traffic to top affiliates declined by an average of 14% during the two holidays.

Slickdeals and CNET are two of the top affiliates that are sending traffic to retailers.

The data also examined conversion rates among all big-box retailers. Amazon.com peaked at 12.5% during Cyber Monday. Year-over-year shopping category traffic remained stable, though some sites like kohls.com and costco.com experienced dramatic gains.

The last SimilarWeb report focused on Amazon Prime Day, showing strong growth in traffic across other retailers. Drayton doesn’t see the same growth for other retailers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amazon isn’t giving them a boost.

The three main reasons he points to include flat overall traffic to retailer sites, and app and declining affiliate traffic, Drayton said.

Understanding the overall trend of the data can help to optimize campaigns during other holidays such as Valentine’s Day.