Auction Sites - Auctions Build Traffic

AUCTIONS BUILD TRAFFIC

Because of their popularity with consumers, online auctions are seen as a way for Web sites to increase traffic. Online auctions have a certain "game" quality for consumers, who often approach them as a winning or losing proposition. Online auctions typically stretch out over several days or even weeks and end at a specific time. Consumers may employ automated bidding software to find desired items and place bids at appropriate times. They often develop a bidding strategy to increase their chances of getting the items they want at a reasonable price. One strategy known as "sniping" involves placing a winning bid at the last possible second, just before the auction expires.

Forrester Research estimated that online auction sales reached $1.4 billion in 1998 and projected they would increase to $19 billion by 2003. Consumer-to-consumer online auctions accounted for $3 billion in sales in 1999, according to E-Commerce Times. eBay is the leading auction site on the Internet and as of November 2000 it was the tenth-most-visited Internet site. At that time some $12 million worth of daily merchandise was sold at auction on eBay. Yahoo! Auctions sold about $500,000 a day, and Amazon.com 's auctions sold about $200,000 per day.

The 2000 holiday shopping season saw a surge of visitors to online auction sites. According to Media Metrix, eBay had 2.6 million average daily unique visitors, compared to 1.6 million for Amazon.com, for the week ending December 3, 2000. That represented an 89-percent increase over the same week in 1999 for eBay. Daily visits to online auction sites in general were up 62 percent over the previous year during the holiday season.