Where were you on Black Friday? If you were online, there is a pretty decent chance that you were looking for a sweet deal or two, and where better to find a deal than walmart.com? Well, you weren’t alone. Nearly 7% of all U.S. Internet users on Black Friday visited walmart.com, almost seven times the site’s average reach on any given day in 2008. But what was behind this remarkable spike? Using Compete Pro Analytics, we took a closer look at Walmart’s strategy to identify a few ways in which walmart.com blew away the competition.

Step 1: Using Compete Site Analytics, we ran a Daily Reach report for walmart.com. The graph below highlights our findings: walmart.com’s Black Friday Reach equaled that of amazon.com’s – nearly7% of all people online that day!

Step 2: Next, using Compete Referral Analyics, we drilled down to examine some of the sources of Walmart’s online traffic. One clear alliance that walmart.com forged was with key Black Friday specific sites. As you can see in the data below, walmart.com captured nearly twice the referral traffic share from the top ten Black Friday websites as the next closest competitor.

Step 3: Using Compete Ranked Lists, we ran a report on the top 15,000 Compete ranked sites in November, sorted that list by growth and examined the top ten Black Friday sites. On average, traffic to these sites grew by 1600% over the previous month, confirming that Walmart’s strategy of leveraging Black Friday site traffic lift was a good one.

Step 4: Finally, we honed in on Search data with Compete Search Analytics to see if Walmart’s multichannel media blitz was coupled with Search marketing. Using the Keyword Destination report, we ran a Broad Match for the term “Black Friday”, and sure enough, walmart.com was the top retailer site getting traffic from the keyword.

A carefully crafted and well-executed traffic acquisition strategy resulted in walmart.com kicking off the holiday shopping season with a bang.

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